Running from the past, and backing into love.

For his follow-up to 1979's Academy Award-winning Norma Rae, director Martin Ritt re-teams with that film's star, Sally Field, for this gritty romantic road comedy. Reportedly Ritt's homage to Frank Capra's films of the 1930s, Back Roads stars Field as Amy Post, a no-nonsense prostitute in the deep South struggling with the fact that she gave up her only child for adoption. When Amy first encounters the recently unemployed Elmore Pratt (Tommy Lee Jones), she is anything but fond of the drifter. But after taking to the road together with dreams of California, the two societal misfits find themselves falling for each other. Ritt and Field would team together once again four years later in another romantic comedy set in the South, Murphy's Romance.


It has been reported that Field and Jones disliked one another intensely.[1] Director Ritt reportedly said later that he regretted not being able to make this film work, blaming its failure on both the script and the stars' inability to get along.[citation needed]
Nevertheless, in his March 13, 1981 New York Times review, critic Vincent Canby wrote that there "seems to be a real rapport" between the two actors. Canby described the film as "extremely appealing and occasionally gutsy and very funny."[citation needed]
Other reviewers were less kind. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars on a scale of four, although he did comment that Field "gives a performance that cannot be faulted."[citation needed]
David Keith, Michael V. Gazzo and Barbara Babcock were also in the cast.

Release Date: March 12, 1981

Distrib: Warner Brothers


Boxoffice: $11,809,387 2013: $34,196,200