A pair of drag-racing drifters battle against willing competitors all along the back roads of America, encountering a wild cast of characters and getting embroiled an endless series of sidetracks that turns Hellman's film into a broad existential metaphor, cementing its place as one of 1970s Hollywood's bravest motion pictures.
Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop is one of the most original and compelling American movies of the twentieth century. It is a road movie, a film about cars, and a sea... more >
Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop is one of the most original and compelling American movies of the twentieth century. It is a road movie, a film about cars, and a search for meaning in American life. Shot from the inside of a car, it is a film that simply observes and what it sees is pure Americana: its people, gas stations, diners, and drag strips. We feel the claustrophobia, the spaces, the speed, and the loneliness.
The film stars singers James Taylor and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys as taciturn drag races who drive their souped-up 1955 Chevy across the country challenging locals to a drag race. The main characters are drifters. They come from nowhere and are headed east, toward a destination that is murky at best. They are people whose reality begins and ends with their machines. Warren Oates, a Monte Hellman regular, turns in a truly outstanding performance as the driver of a Pontiac GTO who challenges Taylor and Wilson to a cross-country race, the prize being the ownership of the cars.
They go from town to town, just trying to survive by racing. In the words of author John Banville, they "have no past, no foreseeable future, only the steady pulse of a changeless present". Two-Lane Blacktop is an exceptionally beautiful film, a poetic description of a world without possibilities. It looks for the soul of America in the early 1970s and comes up empty. Everyone is biding their time waiting for life to turn out rather than creating the possibility. They are like many of us, skimming along on the surface of life, reminiscing about a goal that once seemed real but is now just out of reach, looking ahead to a blank future, while ignoring the life around them. < less
