vanishing point is not a great movie, but it's a movie with some greatness in it. some people, okay: me, would say it's a movie about nothing. a guy tries to race a car from denver to san francisco, attracting all kinds of unwanted attention as he goes. there's potential in that to make a very cool, stripped-down badass car movie. but that is not at all the film that director richard c. sarafian had in mind. on paper, this would seem like a movie right up my alley. i can dig me a good '70s gritty man movie. quentin tarantino's death proof is a loving tribute to these kind of films, even featuring many elements of this one like the iconic white 1970 dodge challenger "supercharged" r/t 440 magnum. it is undeniably a badass car, and it gets put through the wringer here. legendary stunt coordinator/driver/steve mcqueen's stuntman carey loftin was in charge of the car sequences here and they really are something special. if this movie was all badass muscle car racing like a bat out of hell through any obstacle, it would be unstoppable, like crank in a car. however, sarafian was thinking much more ambitiously, and his reach exceeded his grasp. now, people forget that "the '60s" as we think of them didn't really start until the summer of love in '67. before that, except for some growing counter-culture pockets, most of the world was still very much in the '50s. and once the hippie movement got going, it didn't just stop when the calendar turned to 1970, when this was filmed. a lot of people will say "the '60s" wrapped up by the end of 1973, actually. with the us finally pulling all troops out of vietnam, the watergate scandal making it clear that nixon's re-election wouldn't last long, and an oil embargo in the middle east raising gas prices in the west, probably a lot of people shifted their attention back domestically. in the us, the draft was ended, roe vs wade was decided (rip), and birth control pills became federally-funded. musically, a lot of bands moved into different soundscapes in '73, too. basically, there was a whole different vibe going on. so vanishing point really was made dead-in-the-middle between '67 and '73, and it reflects the experimental counter-culture movement of the times. it's an attempt at easy rider in a car, an exploration of the soul of america. unlike that film though, this one only works as a metaphor. i don't know how many drugs sarafian did, but if you wondered about the infamous ending, or just caught on to any of the ridiculousness as the film goes, you'd probably want to look up what the hell he was thinking after you see the movie. and you'd find him talking about "the molecule of speed" and "existing on another plane" and other trippy, woah, way out dude, ideas. honestly, the script for the film was a hot mess for me. it doesn't help that apparently he skipped filming whole scenes due to his shooting schedule being cut by 22 days. so dig this, cool cats. we're told at the start that our driver, kowalski, must get from denver on friday night to san francisco on monday afternoon to deliver a car. it takes roughly 19 hours for that drive if you're not driving like a possessed counter-culture warrior cranked up on speed and blues. so several people at the start of the film wonder why he's insistent on driving there starting friday night, since he's got plenty of time. but he replies he's gotta get there by 3pm sunday (for some unknown reason), and then everyone is like "ooh, you probably can't make it", which still makes no sense. he has plenty of time, particularly driving all night, especially maxing out the speed of his car. but it turns out they're right, he probably can't make it, because he's constantly stopping his car and turning around and making detours and generally just being really bad at his job. anybody who's ever driven in traffic can tell you that if you race ahead, you're mostly just getting to the obstacle faster. the next light, the next car, etc. keeping a consistent, slightly-fast speed will get you there almost exactly as fast, with so much less stress and drawing less attention. in fact, kowalski's insane driving, fun as it is to watch, is most of the reason he can't succeed. he draws way too much attention to himself and creates more obstacles. then every time he causes a crash or something, he stops, backs up, checks on everyone. it's all very sweet, and completely stupid. even stupider is the idea that when he whips past cops and other cars at full speed, they can come from a dead stop and catch up to him on these straight desert roads. uh, no. that's not how physics works. by the time he passes them, there is already no fucking way they're catching up to him unless he stops. so take this as a metaphor instead. kowalski is his own worst enemy. he's got self-imposed deadlines and chances upon all these strange characters in his journey through life, ultimately perhaps (in the uk version) chancing to meet death herself. he doesn't really know why he's racing forward, only that he's hurtling towards death, and that's honestly what he's getting off on. he turns down women left and right, like the iconic butt-naked motorcycle girl, gilda texter (who became a famous costume designer). i can't possibly imagine what all the various metaphors in the film symbolize, what symbolic role each of the wacky supporting cast plays, but something something, better to burn out than to let the man make you stop racing? i don't know, i wasn't in the counter-culture and haven't taken near enough drugs. as an actual narrative film, this is a mess. you can see spielberg improving on this later the same year with his tv film, duel. as much as the protagonist in that film annoyed the piss out of me, we did at least get a sense of his interior life, of his feeling while driving. in vp, we just get filled in through these random flashbacks, which to me were a lazy, poorly-integrated plot device. there's this relationship with a black dj who has inexplicably decided to set up shop in the most redneck town you could imagine. the relationship at times seems uni-directional, at times seems almost psychic. played by cleavon little, the dj steals the film and gives it some of the little real personality that it has. this aspect would be done much better a few years later though in the warriors. the problem is that as some kind of commentary on "the american spirit" or whatever, the film doesn't seem to have much to say, and certainly not anything original. fight the power? we're all going to die someday? it never feels as poetic as easy rider, as philosophical as hunter s. thompson's writing, as confrontational as sweet sweetback, as transgressive as psych-out, as pointed as medium cool. it's a kind of mish-mash that i don't think anyone involved in making it really was on the same page about. star barry newman seemed to think it worked both symbolically and literally, stating "kowalski smiles ... at the end of vanishing point because he believes he will make it through the roadblock." the film was a flop, even though it's gained a cult following since. like a lot of cult films, it's not actually a very good movie, but there are some awesome parts that you'd be really drawn to if you dropped by someone's house at 1am and grabbed a beer, looked across the room and saw some people planted on a beat-up couch, invested in the film as much as in their own altered states. you go away thinking, "yeah, that was pretty cool. i've gotta remember that one. vanishing point?" but no, for a lot of straight film watchers, the impression is going to be something like contemporary critic larry cohen, when he reported "it's calculated, tedious and in desperate need of tightening... devoid of a cohesiveness that might have made it work". or charles champlin who wrote, "vanishing point might have had a point, but it ...ah...(vanished). what's left is sophisticated craft and fashionably-hokey cynicism." harsh words, but all these years later i can't say i felt the film came together any better than they did. uk or us version doesn't truly matter, the overall experience is the same. there are well-filmed shots that really capture the speed of the car by great cinematographer, john a. alonzo. but then there's all the boring side-stuff. there is an awesome kind of theme track by the j.b. pickers. but then there's all this incongruous easy-listening soul and funk. there's this metaphorical story about racing towards oblivion. but then there are all these real world concerns shoehorned in like needing to take uppers, the media reporting, the mechanics of radios, how police coordinate. it's a film jammed with disparate ideas that sarafian can't reel in. perhaps some cinephiles'll really respond to the opportunity to fill in their own blanks and decide this film means what they want it to mean. for me, i mostly just appreciate the stylistic legacy it's had on later films.