TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971) (A-minus) - This landmark film is a time capsule of an era of hippies and gear-heads embarking on a cross-country trip, one that would set the template for a decade of American road movies.
With mostly non-actors in key roles and a shambolic, improvisational narrative, director Monte Hellman creates a documentary-like chronicle of a specific time and place. With real-life sights, sounds, and extras swirling all around, the film has a kinship with "David Holzman's Diary" from four years earlier, when the counter-culture was just emerging. It's a land of gas-station attendants, analog crowd gatherings, 10-ounce bottles of Coca-Cola, and tinny sounds emanating from car stereos.
Here, the dirty hippies have taken over, and with a new decade dawning, they are adrift. Pop stars James Taylor and Dennis Wilson play a driver and his mechanic, respectively, who tinker with their souped-up Chevy and seek out road rallies and drag races to earn enough money to drift to the next day. The long hairs mix cockiness with carelessness, revealing no particular inner world or outer world view. They just want to find the next mark and kick his ass.
Approached by a straight-looking punk, the driver works a quick hustle. When a $50 bet is suggested, Taylor, in his monotone, raises the stakes in memorable fashion: "Make it three yards, motherfucker, and we'll have an automobile race."
The pair drifts east, parallelling the old Route 66, passing through Santa Fe, where they enlist a teenage girl (Laurie Bird) to help them scrounge money from tourists on the plaza. At gas stations and roadside diners they occasionally run across an older hot-rodder (Warren Oates) who drives a snazzy GTO. Soon the big gamble is on: A cross-country contest to Washington, D.C, with the winner claiming the title of the other's car.
But rather than engage in an all-out tilt of speed and endurance, the rivals sort of galumph along, finding distractions along the way, the Driver and Mechanic bailing GTO out when his car is on the brink of breaking down. At one breakfast diner the pair mingle with some small-town crew-cuts who marvel at the sight of real-life hippies with a menacing inquisitiveness. The girl zigs in an out of the picture, finding other rides to hitch, a honeybee landing on different flowers.
And while Taylor and Wilson either will not or simply can't offer a glimpse into their characters underneath the axle grease, Oates creates a fascinating character, not so much a drifter as a free agent, longing for some human interaction. He resists the homosexual come-on from a hitchhiker (Harry Dean Stanton, transitioning from TV to film); he lures the Girl into his car for a while, showing off his fancy cassette deck; and he almost begs a salesman to stay with him further on up the road. He spins tall tales, folding them into one another, until even he seems confused about where he has come from and where he is headed. Oates knows sad sacks, and he imbues GTO (no characters are named) with a little-boy melancholy that is genuine.
As time goes on, it's obvious that the finish line is not the goal of any of the men or Hellman himself. Fans of "Smokey and the Bandit" will be disappointed in the plot arc and the dearth of crash-'em-ups. Hellman has positioned himself at a crossroads in American culture, and he doesn't have much interest in what your name is or what your game is. He throws these men together into macho combat that cuts across the American heartland, and it's more about the journey rather than the destination.
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