Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point (1971), Richard Sarafian's now legendary attempt to cash in on the '70s muscle-car movement and the success of 1968's chase-heavy Bullitt, occupies a narrow and magical little niche at the intersection of grindhouse and car-chase. And for a grindhouse movie, notoriously cheap, vulgar, and shocking, Vanishing Point stands out fairly tame and intelligent. You know, for a car-chase movie. That doesn't mean that there aren't some seriously distressing gaps in logic (more on those later), but that the movie says a lot more about society than your typical grindhouse fare.

The film's premise is pretty simple, as these films tend to go. A man known only as Kowalski, a former police detective turned race driver turned pseudo-hippie burnout, must deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger to its new owner. The only problem is Kowalski's in Denver, the new owner's in San Francisco, and the clock is ticking on the appointed delivery time: 15 hours and counting. Now Kowalski races across the intervening miles like a man possessed, a speed demon bent on victory or destruction, and nothing in between. Along the way, Kowalski meets up with friend and foe alike, including a naked biker chick, a pair of gay carjackers, a snake-trapping desert dweller, and a vicious and racist Nevada cop. Kowalski drives to the beat of a soundtrack that positively crackles with '70s soul, funk, and rock rhythms, with some down home banjo pickin' thrown in for good measure. And his guide, and our narrator by proxy: Super Soul, the hip blind DJ that spins the records over the airwaves from some nameless desert town.

A warning: don't try to think too deeply about the plot; it'll hurt your brain. To wit: Kowalski doesn't have to be in San Francisco til Monday morning, but yet he insists on getting there by Sunday. Why? Who knows? To elevate the tension, I suppose. But why not just make the real deadline whatever you want it to be? Why the clunky extra step? And so Kowalski's gonna push the issue and deliver unto this guy a car that has just been driven like mad and crashed and gone over jumps and has probably taken a pretty serious beating, and on top of that is now forfeit to the police as evidence used in the commission of a buttload of crimes? Yeah, that makes total sense. Oh wait, I remember now why he has to get to San Fran by Sunday: he made a bet with his drug dealer that he could do it. Wait wait wait. You're gonna risk life, limb, and some serious jailtime just to win a bet constituting the price of a couple of caps of speed??? Seriously? WTF?

Sins of scripting aside, Vanishing Point is pretty solid. It has great effects, exciting car chases, and a blistering pace that can't be beat. And the two main actors are actually quite phenomenal. Super Soul (Cleavon Little) fills up the void with his socially-conscious sing-song jive, while Kowalski (Barry Newman) broods silently and chews up scenery, barely uttering 20 words all movie.

Vanishing Point is bursting with social and political commentary. Super Soul uses his access to the radio waves and a police scanner to throw down some serious spin, painting Kowalski as an epic counter-culture hero, driven to the brink by "the man" and mercilessly pursued for paltry crimes. The entire American West is transformed into a battleground, a political proving ground. The underdog Kowalski, representing freedom and the human spirit vs. the police, representing, well, the establishment. Kowalski's car becomes his hammer of freedom, his escape hatch. In the end, he not only drives a Challenger, he is "The Challenger."

Vanishing Point's influence on cinema is considerable. It spawned an explosion of car-chase movies, exemplified by Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Cannonball Run (1981). Years later, Quentin Tarantino exposed a whole new generation to Vanishing Point with the car-centered action/horror film Deathproof (2007), that payed homage to Vanishing Point with direct references and a replica 1970 Dodge Challenger.

Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 10/10
Performances: 8/10

The Reverend says: 7/10