The Chase

The Chase (1966) is Arthur Penn's crime drama you can watch online on iFILM. Bubber Reeves escapes prison and heads back toward his small Texas hometown — but word gets there before he does. Too many of the town's respectable men have things to hide, and they would rather Bubber never arrive.

The only figure trying to keep a lid on things is Sheriff Calder, played by Marlon Brando with the weary authority of a man who knows exactly how this will end. Robert Redford is the fugitive, Jane Fonda his wife waiting on the wrong side of town, and Robert Duvall one of the men who chose comfort over conscience long ago. Penn shot this a year before Bonnie and Clyde and the sensibility is already there — violence not as spectacle but as something a community produces when it gets drunk and scared enough.

The screenplay came from Lillian Hellman, adapting Horton Foote's play. What makes the film land is the crowd: ordinary people who slide toward cruelty without anyone giving the order. Stream The Chase (1966) on iFILM.