Smash Palace (1982)
This turkey treads equivalent ground to Mike Newell’s Bad Blood (middle-aged New Zealander cracks up and is forced into the post of outlaw). But while Newell constructed a web of social, communal and familial tensions, Donaldson wallows in male menopausal angst via dumbly overstated symbols. So the hero runs a wrecked car dump (his nuptials is failing), but is construction a racing car (he clings to a relationship with his daughter, whom he eventually kidnaps). Exasperate the connections? Instantly forgettable.
