Rating: NR
Genre:
Crime
Release Date: 03/27/2007
Sound: DD2
Run Time: 120 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: Westlake Entertainment Group
This made-for-TV actioner was designed as the pilot for a series based on the popular
Walking Tall films of the 1970s. This time out, a young
Brian Dennehy is cast as the stick-wielding, scrupulously honest Tennessee sheriff
Buford Pusser (played in the films by
Joe Don Baker and
Bo Svenson), with
Forrest Tucker repeating his role from
Walking Tall: The Final Chapter as
Pusser's father. After chasing down a speeding car,
Pusser is disgusted to find that its teenaged occupants (two of them dead, two blinded for life) are stoned out of their minds on bad bootleg hooch. Bypassing due process and other such legal niceties,
Pusser goes on a one-man rampage of destruction in order to square accounts with the evil disco owner-cum-moonshiner responsible for the tragedy. Making things difficult is the fact that one of the villains of the piece is also one of
Buford's oldest pals.
A Real American Hero made its
CBS debut on December 9, 1978.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide