By: Todd Wheatley
(c) IQ-2k   Mar. 2014

(c) 1971 ____ Rated- R ____ ( good+ ) _ some nudity

[ DRUG CINEMA / ACTION ]
Cover Art: fair
Cinematography: good+

starring: Barry Newman, Cleavon Little

I saw this at the drive-in when it came out. I was 9 and my brother was 13. Not really a movie for kids, but that was a different time. "Vanishing Point" encapsulated the recent history of the time: drugs, free love, racial injustice, war, and most importantly, the peak of the "car culture".

The real star of the film is the white dodge challenger. The driver, Barry Newman, later rose to fame as a TV detective, but in this film he played the "anti-hero", as it is known today. A pill popping, ex vet, ex cop, ex race car driver tasked with delivering a new white Dodge Challenger to dubious sources in San Francisco, California.

Kowalski (Newman) once a clean cut cop became jaded by an incident involving his senior officer. It is only now as I am writing this review does that incident set the reason for Kowalski's fall from grace. Besides being jaded with authority Kowalski is ashamed for not stopping the senior officer from molesting a young girl in the back of the squad car while he watched. That combined with the loss of his wife in later years culminated in "self medicating" and a turn towards illegality.

"Vanishing Point" while action oriented also speaks to injustice and misconceptions. Though as a youth I focused on the more salacious elements like the nude girl tooling around the desert on a motor bike. At the time I was too young to grasp the concept of "Free Love", but now it comes as a bit of nostalgia that has been lost to the past.

Today's generation will likely be lost on the knowledge that the Dodge Challenger was the pinnacle of American Heavy Metal and was affordable to a wider segment of the population than today's pinnacles, namely Ferrari's, and Lamborghini's. Early in the film the white Challenger makes it apparent that status isn't everything when it blows a rich guy in a Porche off the road. Ultimately though, "Vanishing Point" is the grand daddy of all car chases making this is a must see film.


(c) 2014    DR-KNOW
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