Customer Reviews

VANISHING POINT

5 star:		(162)
4 star:		(63)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The story begins at the end, where we are shown a roadblock of monstrous proportions, and a white 1970 Dodge Challenger rocketing toward it. From there the tale begins, backing up two days to give the rest of the story. An interstate chase is on for the driver of the Challenger, whom we know nothing at all about. As the story unfolds, the identity of the driver is rationed out in flashbacks and news reports, slowly bringing into focus the nature of the character. At first, we naturally assume the driver to be a simple car thief, as does law enforcement. Gradually, we learn that the driver is not a thief at all, he is simply delivering the car. He is a decorated Vietnam veteran who joined the police department after his honorable discharge, married a beautiful girl, and then lost her in a surfing accident. Not long after, he stopped a senior officer from beating and raping a young hippie girl, and was dishonorably discharged from the force. We also learn that his high-octane burn across the desert is to satisfy a simple wager: if he makes it from Denver to San Francisco in less than 15 hours, he doesn't have to pay for the amphetamines he bought to keep him awake for the trip. He is guided along the way by blind disc jockey "Supersoul" (Cleavon Little), who speaks to the driver (whose name is we learn is Kowalski (no last name given, via the AM radio in the Challenger. Supersoul is Kowalski's invisible guardian angel, advising him of the cop's attempts to stop him, at least until some local rednecks bust into the radio station with a storm of rocks and racial epithets and beat Super Soul and his engineer into submission. As Kowalski rockets across the blasted desert landscape, he encounters numerous crackpots and visionaries, all of whom seem to offer another piece to the puzzle that Kowalski's life has become. From prospectors to faith healers, outlaws to newlywed hijackers, we are given a glimpse into a world that exists far from the beaten track we all travel each day. As Kowalski hurtles toward his date with the destiny that was mapped out for us at the very beginning of the film, each rumor and news report seems to contradict the image of him that is being played out by the police of several states, elevating him to something of a folk hero among a growing legion of fans and supporters.
This movie knocked me out from the very beginning. For those die-hards, yes, there are plenty of car chases and stunts to satisfy most fans of car/action films. But that's not the whole story, by any measure. For this is the story of one man, not a mythic legend, or even a regional folk hero. Why does he do what he does? He simply has nothing left to lose or gain. How many men returned from Vietnam at least a little disillusioned by the world they came home to? How many have had their lives mapped out neat and pretty, only to have the blind monkey wrench of fate turn their worlds upside down? Here is a man who is perfectly willing to sacrifice his freedom, his safety, and possibly even his life to win what amounts to a ten-dollar bet, at best. When Kowalski finally arrives at the roadblock, the inevitable conclusion to his odyssey, he takes the only road he knows, a path which had been set for him ever since the beginning.

On a cinematic level, the influence of Vanishing Point is far reaching, indeed. The story of a jaded ex-cop who has lost his wife, his hope and, to a degree, his humanity, was taken and nitro-injected in George Miller's Mad Max (1979) and the Road Warrior (1982), as Max Rockatansky (not too far a reach from Kowalski) has his life violently ripped out from under him, and thus turns to the open road. At first for revenge, but then because it is the only world he can exist in, a place where jungle law prevails. By then, Max is nothing more than a shell, a ghost of a human who haunts the blighted landscape propelled by a hunger not even he can understand. One of the most effective plot devices is that of not giving the protagonist a name until well into the film. Joel Schumaker used this technique very well in his good movie Falling Down (1993), not giving Michael Douglas' character a name until the final act of the film's story. By doing this, we are allowed to see the character as a sort of everyman, someone whom we may know, or may even be. We are then free to observe the goings-on at a much more personal level, knowing all too well that the story being played out upon the screen could, given the right circumstances, be any of us, and to that end, possibly even all of us. By the time we learn that the character is someone, it's too late. They are already a part of us, bound by destiny and experience. Also of note is the using of a disc jockey to provide a running commentary on the nature and exploits of the protagonist (as well as provide a reasonable source for the music in the film), a device used, to lesser effect, in Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979). Lastly, although film characters have been bumping into oddballs in the desert for years, Abbe Wool's wonderful Roadside Prophets (1992) stands out as the protagonists wander through the desert, encountering numerous wisdom-dispensing desert dwellers, each contributing their ideas, ideals, and experiences in a way that lends toward a larger collective ideology wherein a greater truth resides.

This is a masterpiece of filmmaking. Do yourself a huge favor and check it out.

After seeing this movie in '71, a year before obtaining my driver's licence, it truly influenced my driving skills and my love for high performance American horse power. Seeing the movie now almost a hundred times over, I know the dialog word for word. This is a cult classic to be shared with those 70's era Mopar fanatics who too have seen this movie in it's various cuts at the local driveins. (And attemped to drive just as fast as Kowalski did after they left the drivein). Having the sound track on LP(vinyl) and the movie on VHS, I can revisit my obsession with this film and sound track when ever I feel the need to reassure myself for need of controlled speed. Remember, they used several Challengers during the filming and you can see some of the different cars throughout the film if you have a sharp eye. For those who can fix the frame of the movie just after Kowalski makes impact and someone is spraying water on the wreckage, they can see the the car is a white Camaro. Look at the vent windows on the door frame. Challengers did not have these! For those with a really sharp eye and a large screen can see the Camaro script on the truck lid also. For those newer viewers, sit back and enjoy a pre Dukes of Hazzards true car chase. It doesn't get any better than this. (Unless we can get it on DVD along with a CD version of the excellant music sound track! Hint, Hint!)

This is a classic movie that is as much social commentary as car chase. I remember watching this on a Saturday matinee on my local television station (long before the advent of cable television) and was mesmerized.

I recently purchased the VHS version and it was just as sweet twenty years later.

The premise isn't much: the main character, former member of society now riding on the fringe, has to get a car to San Francisco in 15 hours. Load up on amphetamines and off we go. The 'plot' is merely a vehicle for the ride.

The car chase scenes are great and realistic (none of the special effects laden hocus pocus you see today) and the cinematography of the West is beautiful. The characters, from the DJ who plays mystical guide to the helpers the driver meets in the desert, show life on the fringe. I'm sure on some level this is a mystical, metaphorical journey of sorts but to me it is simply fun to watch.

The soundtrack is absolutely great. It is kind of the O Brother Where Art Thou of the 70s -- the one that missed the radar. It isn't music you hear on the radio and it certainly isn't mainstream in any fashion but it sure is good.

I give this five stars quite simply because of the cinematography, the cast of characters and the music. Well worth the visit. They just don't make films like this anymore.

What's not mentioned on the cover or in any of these other reviews is that this copy must have been transfered by or remastered from the original negative. I've never seen this film look so good except for when i first saw it on T.V. back in the 70's. Everthing is better, The sound, The picture, The action, And i think even the plot is made better by this upgrade. If you already own one of those other copies of this movie, Buy this one, You wont be disapointed.

Absolutely the best car chase movie ever made! Ex cop, ex race driver Kowalski takes his 440 Dodge Challenger in a mad dash from Denver to San Francico for a reason only he knows! With the aid of blind disc jockey, "Super Soul" he outruns the "Big Blue Meanies" through 4 states, reliving his tortured past and meets an interesting array of people along the way! The movie is fast paced, helped along by one of the best movie soundtracks ever put together, with music from Kim Carnes, Jerry Reed, Mountain, and a whole lot more! The movie begins showing the almost ending and flashes back to Day One! Even when you get to the ending again, it leaves you wondering if there could be a sequal! Barry Newman as Kowalski, Cleavon Little, (Blazing Saddles) as "Super Soul are perfect! I saw this movie 25 times in the theaters in 1971, and still enjoy this movie on video as much today! I give it, 2 Thumbs Up and 2 Big Toes up!

I remember seeing this movie in the theater in 1971 and had always wanted it on tape. I would check my local t.v. listing to see if it would be shown. but no luck. Thankfully it has been released on VHS for it's second time. The packaging is different on the first VHS release of Vanishing Point. Starring Barry Newman as a an ex-cop and race car driver named Kowalski, his job is to drive a suped up 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 24 hours or less. He drives the state cops nuts with his antics and soon all the state troopers from Colorado to California are after him. As he drives this musclecar he flashes back images to his days a a cop, his affair with a girlfriend hippy and as a race car driver. He has the help of Super Soul (Cleavon Little) a small town disc jocky helping him and letting him know which routes are crawling with cops. But the appeal of this movie are the amazing car chase scenes which in my opinion are some of the best I've seen (along with "Gone in 60 Seconds). If you enjoy car movies like this one, by all means pick this movie up before it's deleted. Highly recommended!

Richard Sarafian's 1971 film "Vanishing Point" is, for starters, a fascinating study of those persons anthropologists sometimes term "marginal men"--individuals caught between two powerful and competing cultures, sharing some important aspects of both but not a true part of either, and, as such, remain tragically confined to an often-painful existential loneliness. Inhabiting a sort of twilight zone between "here" and "there," a sort of peculiar purgatory, these restless specters cannot find any peace or place, so they instead instinctively press madly on to some obscure and unknown destination, the relentless journey itself being the only reason and justification.

Disc jockey Super Soul (Cleavon Little) and delivery driver Kowalski (Barry Newman) are two of these specters, marginal but decent, intelligent men who can't or won't live in burgeoning competing cultures which in reality have offered them very little of worth or substance, despite their own personal sacrifices. Kowalski himself had tried to "fit in" with the Establishment as a soldier and police officer and later, attempted to do the same with the blossoming 1960s counterculture, but soon disappointingly found that they both were ridden with their own various forms of dishonesty and insincerity. Personal honor, self-reliance, honesty, justice and genuine respect--Kowalski's stock in trade--were tragically valued very little by either, despite each one's shrill and haughty claims to the contrary.

Moreover, it's no accident Newman's character has a Polish surname; the Poles throughout their history have created a very rich and unique Slavic culture largely based upon just such a "marginality"--being geographically jammed between two powerful and radically different historic enemies, Germany and Russia, and never being able to fully identify with either one, at often great cost to themselves. It's also no accident Little's character is blind and black, the only one of his kind in a small, all-Caucasian western desert town--his sightlessness enhancing his persuasiveness and his ability to read Kowalski's mind, the radio microphone his voice, his race being the focus of long simmering and later suddenly explosive disdain--all of the characteristics of a far-seeing prophet unjustly (but typically) dishonored in his own land.

The desert environment also plays a key role in cementing the personal relationship between and respective fates of these two men--to paraphrase British novelist J.G. Ballard, prophets throughout our history have emerged from deserts of some sort since deserts have, in a sense, exhausted their own futures (like Kowalski himself had already done) and thus are free of the concepts of time and existence as we have conventionally known them (as Super Soul instinctively knew, thus creating his own psychic link to the doomed driver.) Everything is somehow possible, and yet, somehow nothing is.

Finally, "Vanishing Point" is also a "fin de siecle" story, a unique requiem for a quickly dying age,a now all-but-disappeared one of truly open roads, endless speed for the joy of speed's sake, of big, solid muscle cars, of taking radical chances, of living on the edge in a colorful world of endless possibility, seasoned with a large number and wide variety of all sorts of unusual characters straight from the minds of Mark Twain and Nelson Algren, all of which had long made the USA a wonderful place. "Vanishing Point" poignantly shows us that such a world was already slipping away in 1971, and now, over 30 years later, it sadly is but a fond memory, having been brutally supplanted by today's swarms of sadistic, military-weaponed cop-thugs, obsessive and intrusive safety freaks, soulless toll plazas, smug yuppie SUV drivers, tedious carbon-copy latte towns, and a infantile craving for perfect, high-fuel-efficiency safety and security, rather than individual liberty, at all costs, a "brave new world" where simply wanting to be left alone amidst Orwellian chants of "it's for the children" and "either you're with us or against us" is now tantamount to near-treason.

The DVD contains both the US and UK releases of the film; the UK release, I believe, is a much more satisfying film, as it has the original scenes deleted from the US version. As an aside, Super Soul's radio station call letters, KOW, are in fact the ones for a country & western station in San Diego.

Someday this cult classic will make it to DVD, and my freinds if enjoy fast paced car chase action movies this is a must for your collection. Not only is it a great movie, but the soundtrack of songs from such artists as Delany & Bonnie, Mountain, and Kim Carnes (years before she did "Bette Davis Eyes") would be a great soundtrack if it ever was put together (Problem is back in 1970, movie soundtracks were rare, only musicals had them).

The movie is basically about a driver name Kowalski who's trying to deliver a Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in less than 24 hours. It's filled with flashbacks and events that take place thoughout Kowalski's life all while he's speeding though the desert in the Challenger.

Cops, Hippies, Bikers, Gospel Faith Groups, Kowalski meets them all during his journey.

Read the other reviews to get more detail about the movie, but trust me, the music and cinematography are outstanding and you"ll really enjoy this movie.

The 1972 existential road movie "Vanishing Point" succeeds on so many levels, that it is difficult to pinpoint any one reason for its enduring popularity. This rousing, if not groovy, car-chase flick has so much going for it, most notably the era in which it was produced (early 1970s, Woodstock generation).

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"Vanishing Point's" main protagonist, a speed-popping anti-hero known as Kowalski - nicely played by Barry Newman - is an unshaven, darker version of the Steve McQueen persona perfected in the film "Bullit." In fact, "Vanishing Point" is just a full-length movie version of that film's now-famous car chase scene. But the filmmakers (director Richard C. Sarafian, writer Guillermo Cain) got lucky. They located the car chase along the stretches of America's breathtaking western landscape. They chose a car, a growling white Challenger, that had extraordinary esthetic muscle. And they gave Kowalski an energetic, anti-establishment sidekick in radio DJ Super Soul, superbly played by the late Cleavon Little.

And the dream-like imagery, including a nude woman upon a motorcycle, a hippie commune performing an impromptu concert in the Nevada desert, and of course, Kowalski driving aimlessly across the desert as if lost in his own hallucination, all contribute to a film that plays like one long MTV video a full decade before that medium was created. Certainly the contemporary psychedelic/folk music (including Mountain and Kim Carnes) contributes to the overall counterculture allure of "Vanishing Point."

Like an odd puzzle where the pieces never entirely fall into place (another part of the attraction to this film is it can be interpreted a number of ways), "Vanishing Point" tells the story of one Kowalski, an aimless driver who delivers cars for a living. On a bet, he decides to deliver a Challenger from Denver to San Francisco within 15 hours. He's eventually chased by policemen from three different states as they attempt to put a halt to his speed odyssey. DJ Super Soul picks up on the story on the scanner, and begins to give Kowalski secret tips on the air to elude police roadblocks. It all leads to an explosive conclusion on the California border which will stay with the viewer long after the film's final credits.

"Vanishing Point" moves at such a breakneck pace, one can forgive the film for its many faults. These would include the multiple out-of-place flashbacks, detailing Kowalski's troubled life; the comedic portrayal of policemen as bumbling keystone cops; and several heavy-handed scenes of symbolism portraying Kowalski as a Messiah-like figure.

But the filmmakers captured this counterculture era almost perfectly, and the image of Kowalski speeding across the plains of Colorado and Nevada, staring off into the sun-baked western landscape of nowhere through the dusty windshield of a roaring Challenger, is about as cool an American symbol of rebellion as one will ever see on film. And that is why "Vanishing Point" is such a terrific film. After 30 years, this groovy drive-in flick which came out of nowhere to become a cult classic, is still "cool."

I not going to reveiw this movie the same way the others above have...if you have read all the other reveiws, then you know about the storyline....Well , here it is...if you have been looking for it since '71 ...you've found it...saw this movie at the theatre and then the drive in, on TV and finally now on this video...and as a bonus..it is the extended version...with the missing scenes of Kowalskis' girlfriend's drowning...this was edited out for TV...the car is a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T (road and track)...it was one of 5 cars used for the shooting of the movie.Some of the cars had 440 magnums and a couple were just 383 cars...there is also a 440 Six pack car that you can see the emblems on the hood in one scene. The car they used for most close ups was equipped with Rim blow steering wheel, 15" rallys, am-fm radio, power windows, solid white paint with stripe delete, power bulge hood, polyglas tires and a 4 speed trans with a pistol grip shifter .Barry Newman did some of the stunts himself, and many of the burnouts...I could go on and on but I've only got 1000 words...by the way...the car that hits the dozers at the end is a '68 Camaro....Kowalski lives and Mopar Rules!!!!