…White Lightning leans into Reynolds’ good ol boy persona before it became a parody of itself, and the results are agreeably rough and tough..there’s well-staged, fairly realistic car chases, with spectacular endings…

Standard yahoo fare marginally elevated by good performances and a certain sense of devil-may-care style.

Although it's a bit trashy, White Lightning made Burt Reynolds a star and established his oeuvre of fast cars, bad cops, frisky women and smoldering machismo.

[Burt] Reynolds settles down to a non-self conscious, easy-going performance that makes you think he might even be worth all that heavy hype.