• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 8 hours ago

A driver for a southwestern crime organization leaves rivals in the dust in a 1970 Plymouth Duster that revives memories of a time when gas guzzling was as American as apple pie and nobody cared.

Ah, those were the days, right? The car is the title character in the action thriller “Duster,” now streaming on Max. 

It’s a souped-up version of a Duster, which in the memory of a child from the wonder years of the early ’70s was a car suburban moms drove to the supermarket.

Most of the American-made V8 gas hogs of the ’60s and ’70s were regular cars for two-car families. Years later, they came to be mythologized, prized and customized.

As anyone knows who watches the mesmerizing, addictive, live car auctions of the Mecum and Barrett-Jackson auction houses on TV, collector cars from the era of cheap, abundant gas go for high prices. 

By coincidence, a Plymouth Duster was featured just yesterday on the Mecum website home page.

The star of “Duster” is the car, but the co-star is Josh Holloway, who plays Jim Ellis, the veteran driver who aids and abets in violent crimes and other illegal activities.

Nevertheless, his roguish charm and rugged good looks have earned him the affection of many friends and acquaintances around Phoenix, Arizona, where the criminal enterprise that employs him is based. 

One character who is no friend of Jim’s is a young FBI agent just out of Quantico who has been assigned to the Phoenix office in a kind of early example of affirmative action. 

A native of Baltimore, the agent is African-American, female and has no field experience. When she arrives in the office, she is mostly spurned by the agents already established there who are all male.

Played by Rachel Hilson, Special Agent Nina Hayes is dogged and determined. She disobeys orders, but gets a lot further in her investigation of organized crime in Phoenix in one day than the entire office has gotten in years.

While this might seem farfetched, the show is so well-made and well-written that her astonishing skill comes across as completely plausible.

“Duster” is a thrill to watch from beginning to end. It comes from executive producers J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan, who is the showrunner.

The show does a great job of re-creating its time frame. The year is 1972, which we learn from subtle clues such as the arrest of the Watergate burglars in June of that year -- a story that goes in one ear and out the other as far as the characters in “Duster” are concerned.

Music is used, but not overused, to great effect. Songs inserted into Episode One included “Money (That’s What I Want)” by the Sonics in 1965, “I Just Want to Celebrate” by Rare Earth (1970, and also used in the series finale of “Six Feet Under”) and “Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress),” 1972, with its opening lyrics “Saturday night I was downtown, workin’ for the FBI …”

Holloway and Hilson are great in the show, and they receive very experienced support from Keith David (“Greenleaf” on OWN) as the head of the crime syndicate, Greg Grunberg (“Heroes”), Gail O’Grady (“NYPD Blue”) and Corbin Bernsen (“L.A. Law”).

The driver of the red Duster is another in a long line of criminal characters on TV who is impossible to dislike. The same can be said for the show itself.

Inset photo courtesy of Volocars.com, Volo, Illinois – car dealership specializing in sales of fully restored classic cars, including the 1970 Plymouth Duster 340 in the photo that is similar to the Duster driven by Josh Holloway in “Duster.” Sorry, the Duster’s been sold, but for other classic cars for sale, visit Volo’s website https://www.volocars.com/ to browse their incredible inventory.