Vanishing Point (1971) – Review

Once upon a time, car chase movies were a different breed other than purely flashy, partially CGI glitz-fests. They were gritty, they were real and even the funny ones tended to still carry significant weight to look like literally everybody involved were risking life and limb just to do something fucking cool. But more than anything else, the car chase movie seemed to constantly represent freedom, either due to a cocky main character using his accelerator pedal to stay out of jail or hinting that the very act of speeding down an endless, two-lane blacktop is the closest to genuine freedom a guy can have as the peace and love generation gradually withered and died.
Arguably the best example of this is Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point, a movie that could accurately be described as what you might have gotten if Sam Peckinpah had smoked a ton of weed while watching Easy Rider and then went and helmed Smokey And The Bandit. Worshiped by the likes of Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarrantino, it’s time to steer our 1970 Dodge Challenger at the heart of the collapsing American dream and burn a shitload of rubber.

Kowalski is a car delivery driver who likes nothing more than transporting a souped-up automobile across state lines in order to meet brutally strict time frames. He usually does this by taking speed and thrashing the bollocks out of whatever motor he’s delivering in order to make ridiculous deadlines, but he also does it as its the only time in his life he ever truly feels free. Of course, we here at We’ve Got Issues would never endorse driving under the influence of narcotics, but it seems to work pretty well for Kowalski, however, his latest task may well prove to be his toughest of all.
Choosing the dubious mission of getting that white Challenger from Denver Colorado late on a Friday night to San Francisco by Monday, Kowalski stocks up on his favourite uppers and hits that dusty trail, but he soon catches the notice of local law enforcement who don’t take kindly to the driver streaking through their highways like a roaring meteor. However, what starts as a simple police chase soon starts to snowball as Kowalski early shrugs of his pursuers only to attract more as he passes on through to Nevada without showing signs of slowing anytime soon. It isn’t long until blind disc jockey “Super Soul” gets wind of this and starts building up a hyperbolic mythos around the defiant driver, declaring him, among other things, as the last American hero, the electric centaur and the super driver of the golden west that turns the Benzedrine popper into an instant folk hero.
However, this unsurprisingly makes the law even more determined to catch Kowalski despite there being no real, actual case against him and soon they’re resorting to underhanded and bigoted methods to snare him. After hundreds of miles and a string of American eccentrics in his rear view, how will Kowalski’s journey finally end?

Anyone coming to Vanishing Point with their engine revving for a non-stop thrill-ride may come away from this cult classic with more than they bargained for, because even though the movie certainly starts out chase heavy and plot light, as the tale gets ever closer to the finishing line a far deeper thread is ultimately revealed. Displaying that same lament that America was slowly being retaken by uneasy squares and deputised fascists that we saw on Easy Rider and utilising that outlaw worship that similarly turned up in Convoy and Smokey And The Bandit, Vanishing Point actually makes a lot of points while not actually talking much at all. Certainly Barry Newman’s Kowalski isn’t your typical type of Robin Hood-esquse anti-hero as not only is he a pill popping speed freak, but he also has something of a telling history that’s told sparcely, but clearly in the odd random flashback. Formerly a hero cop who was discharged for stopping another officer from raping a suspect, we see that our monosyllabic misanthrope was part of the very system he’s literally now driving rings around and a (presumably) failed love affair and a stint as a surfer turned him into the unwitting folk hero he eventually becomes.
The gag is that as long as he’s free (ie. tearing ass across some beautifully photographed sections of America), Kowalski doesn’t seem to give much of a fuck about anything other than using his job to obtain his own particular brand of peace. That’s right, he may knock back Benzedrine like skittles, but the real drug for our anti-hero is the type of unfettered release you get with miles of unending road ahead of you and the rest of the world firmly in you rearview. As a result, once the scene setting has been taken care of and the parameters of this extended chase has been laid out, Sarafian shifts gears into almost an arthouse state, having Kowalski meet with various eccentrics that thrive on the outskirts of humanity.

Be it the frazzled, hippie biker and his clothes-optional girlfriend, to the kooky old guy who collects snakes for a Pentecostal Christian commune, we come across other, almost Lynchian examples of life who also choose to live outside of the more normal ideals of the average joe and it gives the second half of the film a tone that almost feels like Paris, Texas – but with far more car chases.
Ah yes, the car chases… While more modern audiences weaned on overblown, physics mocking, supercharged stuff that you’d see in a Fast & Furious movie, this is the old school shit that’s all the more impressive considering it’s more down to the nimbleness of the driver, rather than setting up crazy, Hal Needem style stunts that requires our lead to jump an endless succession of things. In fact, rather that zoning in on a raft of stunts that stretch credulity, Sarafian focuses more on stunning shots than out and out daring do. Behold an achingly thoughtful sight of the Dodge carving tracks in an otherwise pristine desert that ultimately lead to him creating his own, literal crossroads to ponder, or the iconic vision of the car boring toward a horizon it can never reach. However the real magic of Vanishing Point is that it merges the grindhouse with the artful to such an impressive degree, it’s one of the rare action flicks that actually simultaneously manages to be strangely zen while it’s being ferociously exciting, which actually succeeds in getting across that desperate sense of calm adrenaline that Kowalski is so desperate to experience.

Of course, it also helps that we have Blazing Saddles’ Cleavon Little on hand to energetically pontificate on the behalf of Kowalski as he builds up the legend before the gut punch of an ending. In fact, you feel like Little’s blind DJ/narrator is the direct influence behind those luscious red lips that track the progress of the titular characters of Walter Hill’s The Warriors – which just goes to show that this dusty little car chase movie has so much more going on that just being endlessly referenced in Death Proof.
Exciting yet thoughtful, frantic but zen, political but irreverent, Vanishing Point is a movie that rides that hard, white line between cinematic titillation and soulfullness that prove to move you as it fucking moves.
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