Two-Lane Blacktop - Criterion Collection (1971)

Great Movie

If you love old muscle cars and want to glimse a long gone era in the good ole USA this movie is for you. Solid performances from the actors make this a really watchable movie. June 27, 2008

Criterion Collection Release of Two-Lane Blacktop

This is not a review of the film itself - there are numerous sources of critiques and distillations of the plot (such as it is). Rather, this review is concerned with the presentation of the Criterion Collection dvd release.

The packaging is in a paper sleeve and similar to other recent double disc Criterion releases, such as The Double Life of Veronique - Criterion Collection. This release is one of the most extravagant releases Criterion has helmed, including not one - but two - informative booklets. One contains various essays and production photos and the other contains the entire screenplay.

A copy of the screenplay would be a delight with such Criterion releases as This Sporting Life - Criterion Collection and Kind Hearts and Coronets - both of which contain highly intelligent dialogue. However, with a film like Two-Lane Blacktop, it remains a dull, tepid read. I submit an example:

75. Interior. Car. Driver and Mechanic.
They can see only a hundred feet of road from the headlights.
The Girl is not visible.
GIRL'S VOICE: I'm hungry.

Still, it's icing on the cake for a wonderful release filled with interviews, photos, and outtakes - in addition to a fine print of the film itself. A bargain at nearly any price!
June 22, 2008

The Long, Long Road to Nowhere.

Call it an existentialist movie. Call it a character study. "Two-Lane Blacktop" is probably both. Probably. To say that it's about three guys, two cars and one girl is almost an exaggeration of a plot description. Two of the three guys - The Driver (played by James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson)- seem to exist only to drive in their souped-up, primer grey Chevy. Their sum of their lives is this: one drives, one fixes the car, they race for money so they can continue driving and fixing their car. They may cruise into and out of the lives of others, but, really, nobody has any effect on them. This changes only when The Girl (willowy, spacey Laurie Bird) joins them, unannounced and uninvited, on their long trip to nowhere.

It changes a little more when they meet up with a GTO-driving blowhard played by Warren Oates. He doesn't care much for these young punks, and he lets `em know it. They challenge him to a cross-country race, their respective pink slips hanging in the balance. GTO accepts. They all drive some more.

And so it goes for the four main characters. The Girl may switch allegiances among the three men. The Mechanic may offer to drive. The Driver may turn him down. GTO may tell an all-new whopper to one of the many hitchhikers he picks up. But unlike the similarly themed "Easy Rider" which made riding motorcycles cross-country look like the ultimate freedom, "Two-Lane Black Top" offers up its version of alienation with no sanctuary. There's no counterculture to belong to. No hip lingo or clothing to sport. No sex, no drugs or anything else to give the characters entrance into some sort of elitist, antiestablishment clique. Sure, the guys in "Easy Rider" had run away from the Establishment...but they had all the commune-dwellers, hippie chicks and weird lawyers they needed to be part of a different, even more exclusive club. No such luck for the Driver, the Mechanic and GTO.

For the folks in this movie, there's no scene to be a part of, nowhere to call home, nobody to call a friend, really. The men may muster up the smallest bit of jealousy over the Girl. But mostly, they all just drive, disconnected from pretty much anything or anyone. Oddly, the one character who seems to crave some measure of human contact - GTO - is the most abrasive. But are his lies an attempt to impress, to make himself more attractive? Or are they just a shield he uses to keep anyone from getting too close? Hard to say.

To the casual viewer, this could all be pretty boring stuff. And it's hard to imagine that the early 70s drive-in crowd on whom this movie was dropped could have been anything other than confused by it. For a movie named "Two Lane Blacktop," there ain't a whole lot of racing. And there sure as hell ain't much plot. But it's also a movie that grows on you. A movie that makes you wonder about the characters and want to fill in the blanks. It may not live up to your expectations on a first viewing, but give it a chance. Like a top-shelf Scotch or a premium cigar, the good parts become more and more apparent the more you get to know it.

The real benefit of a release like this, of course, is that it represents the rescue of an obscure little gem. And it's practically worth the price of admission just to see Dennis Wilson and James Taylor onscreen with not a drum kit or guitar in sight. But, as they have with so many other films, the Criterion folks have done this movie up right! There are lots of great extras and info that are sure to please committed fans and converts alike. So hats off to director Monte Hellman for making one of the most perfect examples of arthouse/drive-in cinema. And big thanks to the people at Criterion who got this baby off the ground for our home viewing pleasure.
May 1, 2008

This movie blew me away

Of all the movies in the late 60s-early 70s, this one haunted me the most. It's not about dialog or action in this one... it's what's going on in the periphery. April 29, 2008

Quick FYI on the reviews for *both* DVD releases of this seminal film...

A painlessly quick FYI by a longtime Amazonian on his biggest pet peeve of Amazon reviews: No matter how many DVD releases there are for a particular film, Amazon lumps them all together.

As such, the first 84 reviews are for the *initial* (and now waaaaaaaaay OOP) DVD release of this seminal film by Anchor Bay. The reviews for the *Criterion* release begin with the one on November 24, 2007, which is entitled, "Two-Lane Blacktop: an existential road movie."

Ok, I'm stepping off my titanium soapbox now.... d'oh!!!! March 15, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...