Two-Lane Blacktop - Criterion Collection
by Monte Hellman
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Drake (II), Dennis Wilson, James Taylor, Laurie Bird, Warren OatesDirector: Monte Hellman
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-12-11
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion Collection
Movie Reviews of Two-Lane Blacktop - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: "Those Satisfactions Are Permanent"
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is the ultimate existential road trip.
Although I wouldn't normally say this when describing how I feel about a film but I love the way the movie distances the characters from the audience. Dennis Wilson and James Taylor's lack of acting experience actually adds to the films atmosphere. As true existential characters, they are too focused on 'the road' to worry about anything else. They only show true emotion when the Girl comes between them, making those scenes even more potent.
Everyone here is essentially an archetype with the exception of the Warren Oates character, who is a contradictory, chameleon-like personality, the one character searching not for a destination but an identity. In the midst of the aptly named Driver, Mechanic and Girl, GTO (Warren Oates) best defines the circular themes of the narrative, forever reinventing himself as if he has no true identity. Each character is an existential beast but the Oates character is the most human(or humble) in this sense. As an audience member, he was my entry point into accessing the meanings of the story.
This is one of my favorite American road movies. Highly recommended, worth every penny.
Summary of Two-Lane Blacktop - Criterion Collection
Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 12/11/2007James Taylor is The Driver, a car-obsessed racer with stringy hair and a concentration that precludes conversation. He travels the backroads of rural America with his buddy, The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys), an equally obsessed lost soul at home only in the car or under the hood. They have no names, only designations, and no life outside of their gypsy existence, riding the unending highway in their souped-up '55 Chevy from race to race. After picking up a hitchhiking Girl (Laurie Bird), whose presence breaks the tunnel-vision focus of the two men, they challenge a middle-aged hotshot, the garrulous G.T.O. (Warren Oates) to a cross-country race. Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop is the most alienated evocation of modern America ever made, an almost abstract study in dislocation and obsession set against a vague landscape of roadside diners and rest stops. Taylor and Wilson deliver appropriately blank performances, only expressing emotion when The Girl sparks jealousy between them. Oates is a glib dynamo constructing a new persona in every scene, as if trying on characters to play as he ping-pongs between the coasts. "How fast does it go?" asks The Driver, admiring G.T.O.'s car. "Fast enough," he answers. The Driver snaps, "You can never go fast enough." These are characters on the road to nowhere who can't work up enough speed to escape themselves. --Sean Axmaker
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