Two-Lane Blacktop
1971 Directed by Monte Hellman
Synopsis
You can never go fast enough...
A driver and a mechanic travel around the United States hopping from drag strip to drag strip in a 1955 Chevy Bel-Air coupe. They race for money, betting with their competitors. The pair gain a young and talkative female stowaway. Along the way they unintentionally attract a well-to-do drifter driving a new Pontiac GTO. This older man, looking for attention, antagonizes their efforts.
Cast
Popular reviews
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87/100
Analyzing this film feels wrong, somehow. Its greatness lies in how much it strips away: conventional performances (apart from Oates, who serves as garrulous counterpoint to Taylor and Wilson's superlative blankness), narrative payoffs (where are the tortured Internet debates about who gets the pinks?), establishing shots, etc. What remains is as pure as Americana gets—a road movie that's genuinely, as its title declares, about the actual road. My sole reservation is the way it treats The Girl as chattel for the men, which not only reeks of unthinking sexism but belatedly introduces real conflict (via Taylor's sudden fixation with her) in a film that had been doggedly and deftly sidestepping it up to that point. But that's only a…
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The line "Make it three yards, motherf**ker, and we'll have an automobile race." is one of the great lines that I wish I could plug properly into my life somehow. I got a woman in a minivan to roll down her window at a stop light the other day and I yelled the line at her*. Unfortunately that woman was my Mom, and she made me wash my mouth out with soap when I got home**.
*Fabrication
**Also a fabrication -
"And this is neutral."
"Is this a game?"
"I don't know."Pure undiluted existentialism, somehow more emotionally expressive than seems plausible. The distance between what the male characters want or need in this film and their ability to express it is where the true tragedy stems from; but for much of the time until that lands, it's also fucking funny, in part because Motherfucking Warren Oates, in part of its consistent upheaval of viewer expectations. And so satisfying in its relentless fuck-you to every thing a funding body (be it Hollywood or state-run) would expect from plot, characterization, etc: we know nothing about our two male leads, next to nothing about GTO (the only things he says that are probably…
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Criterion Edition Bluray
Drama, James Taylor (yes THE James Taylor), Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson (drummer for The Beach Boys), and Laurie BirdWhat are the chances that I just watched Zodiac and I pop this in for a rewatch and the girl they pick up says first thing....hey you aren't the Zodiac killer or anything are you.
I can't get enough of this movie, it just may well be a top ten favorite of mine. It's the most realistic car movie out there, from the raw mechanical sounds of the vehicles and engines to the attitudes of the drivers. This is no Fast and the Furious, these cars are real life blue collar budget rides, primer grey, loose bolts, rattling…
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I feel like I took a brick to the head. And I mean that in the best possible way.
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Two-Lane Blacktop wants to be a living, breathing, slice of life rather than just a simple comment on life. Basically watching the movie is like being one of the many hitchhikers picked up by Warren Oates throughout the film. We get to be part of this story for its run-time, but the characters existed and lived before the DVD started spinning and they will exist long after it stops. Were simply along for the ride, and if the movie didn't end they way it does, the ride would never stop.
My favorite thing about this movie is how well the environments are captured, especially the changing weather. Its weird to say that this movie makes me nostalgic for weather, but…
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A quite wonderful road movie that deserves its cult status. Existentialism and all natural performances from non-actors and a superb Warren Oates as their counterpoint.
There's a rather unpleasant piece of trivia attached to this film, three of the four main actors died at a very young age (only James Taylor survives although his hair doesn't) and the DVD release was delayed due to a legal dispute with the estate of another talent who died at a young age, Jim Morrison.
Considering the year of creation you can read metaphor and symbolism in to just about every scene if you so choose but even taken at face value - a story about men and the road - it is a film that entertains on all levels from start to finish.
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A great minimalist "road movie". I'm a huge James Taylor fan, and I love Warren Oates, so I was sure I'd love this movie, and I did. Visually it's great, and has great performances by a partially unprofessional cast. Makes me wish I could just take off on a drive across the country.
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my fave road film, it introduced me to existentialism, Monte Hellman, road movies, non-Hollycrap carbon-copy film, the writings of Rudy Wurlitzer, how eerie & effective it is to NOT have constant, unnecessary Muzak in the b.g. of a film & the great Warren Oates should have won an Oscar for this! it's lovingly called, "the slowest road movie ever made" ;-)
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a film about engine and mood.
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One of the purest expressions of cinema outside of Au hasard Balthazar. It is almost too heartbreaking for me to watch these days.
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Young mop-headed James Taylor ditches the mellow image and convincingly plays a bad boy wandering drag racer running into a series of situations that manage to skate the line between naturalistic and absurd. Surreal and existentialist, it would almost be pretentious except it is not clear what is being said - which lends it an eerie sense of ambiguity and subtlety. Very nicely shot, and Warren Oates is good as some kind of compulsively lying traveler.
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Criterion Edition Bluray
Drama, James Taylor (yes THE James Taylor), Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson (drummer for The Beach Boys), and Laurie BirdWhat are the chances that I just watched Zodiac and I pop this in for a rewatch and the girl they pick up says first thing....hey you aren't the Zodiac killer or anything are you.
I can't get enough of this movie, it just may well be a top ten favorite of mine. It's the most realistic car movie out there, from the raw mechanical sounds of the vehicles and engines to the attitudes of the drivers. This is no Fast and the Furious, these cars are real life blue collar budget rides, primer grey, loose bolts, rattling…
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The quintessential road movie and along with Cockfighter, it's Hellman's best work. Hazy, minimal and essential. An amazing film.
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I've never been big into cars, their inner workings and the racing of them but I've always enjoyed movies about them and Two-Lane Blacktop is no different.
Not a lot happens in this movie. Not much is said. I didn't get the impression that this movie was really about the races (of which we see very little) at all. I started to get a feel about what this movie was really about when the race cross-country to Washington DC was set but it ended up never really being the focus.
The movie is more about the relationships between the the The Driver, The Mechanic, The Girl and GTO (the rival driver) and how they (scarcely) interact with each other and…