Two Lane Blacktop is one of those movies that doesn't offer a lot of narrative and its characters don't have names, but it seduces us with its images of freedom and a seemingly constant nomadic cruise through beautiful landscapes. The four prominent characters consist of three car-enthusiasts and a hitchhiker. The brilliant Warren Oates is the star of the show as 'G.T.O', the driver of a bright yellow 1970 Pontiac G.T.O, who passes a 1955 Chevy driven by 'The Driver', musician James Taylor, who is accompanied by 'The Mechanic', former Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, and a hitchhiker they pick up 'The Girl', Laurie Bird. Later at a gas station they agree to a cross country race to Washington D.C. and we follow them on their way. G.T.O picks up some weird hitchhikers, or creeps as he calls them, including a homosexual who tries it on, played by Harry Dean Stanton. He tells these creeps some very exaggerated tall tales of his life and that is one of the resounding features of the film, with the ultimate statement being the one he tells to two soldiers he picks up near the end, which turns the film around from its outlook at the beginning. Also the other theme seems to be who can win the affection of 'The Girl'?, the old guy or the two young ones? But the film is memorable because of its rarity (it has never been released on video and is still unavailable, but has just been released on DVD) and its bizarre and infamous conclusion. But it is a film that you will want to watch again and again.

Monte Hellman's bleak, gripping, extraordinary existential doozy takes the car race/road movie to the end of the line and gradually hurdles unblinkingly towards a gloriously nihilistic and self-destructive dead end. It's definitely the most alarming and defeatist of 70's car films.

Two rootless, emotionless, apathetic hardcore car freak young men known only as the Driver (ultra-sensitive stringbean 70's singer/songwriter James Taylor) and the Mechanic (affable, burly Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson) tool around America's gray, desolate back-roads highways and byways in their souped-up '55 Chevy and make money by engaging in races with other fellow car freaks in their fancy hot rods. The guys rarely discuss anything besides cars and talk in dense, slangy, highly abstract and unfathomable carspeak. The stoical pair pick up a bored, enigmatic female hitch-hiker (the cute, perky Laurie Bird as "the girl"),who comes between the two and vies for their affections to no avail. Further complications occur when a gabby, cocksure, compulsive liar middle-aged braggart (a sensational Warren Oates) in a sparkling yellow '70 Pontiac G.T.O. challenges the guys to an all-or-nothing cross country race to Washington, D.C. with the winner getting pink slips for both cars.

Hellman's typically grave, austere, tightly self-enclosed and hermetic direction presents a fascinatingly dark and oblique examination of early 70's cultural malaise in extremis. The marvelously open-ended script by Will Cory and Rudolph Wurlitzer offers sharply incisive observations on how obsession can overwhelm and cancel out everything else life has to offer, the alienation and disaffection of people who live on the fringes of society, the desperate measures people with absolutely nothing to lose are willing to resort to, the potent need to ground your life in something in order to give it purpose and meaning ("If I'm not grounded pretty soon I'm gonna go into orbit," Oates pitifully wails at one point),going nowhere fast on the metaphorical highway of life, and the harsh, unrewarding emptiness of lower-class American existence. Jack Deerson's drab, spare, bleached-out cinematography, the deliberately slow pace, the downbeat, pessimistic tone, the low-key acting (Oates in particular is simply superb, while both Taylor and especially Wilson give appealingly naturalistic performances),the emotionally numb characters, a choice soundtrack of gloomy rock tunes, and the grimy gas stations and grubby diners which decorate the flat, dingy, incredibly ugly countryside that's populated by dour, unfriendly people accumulate into an astonishingly stark and vivid evocation of burnt-out, bummed-out, rundown and running on empty early 70's ennui and despair. Harry Dean Stanton has a funny cameo as a gay hitch-hiker who hits on Oates ("I'm not into that!"). A truly terrific and hauntingly grim movie which sticks long in the memory after you see it.

I've seen bad movies, and I've seen worse movies. This one probably qualifies as the most pointless one I've ever seen. It's the Seinfeld of race car movies, one about nothing that happens throughout the entire thing. I couldn't even decipher how it lived up to it's premise about two cars racing each other cross country to get to Washington, DC, with the winner taking ownership of the loser's vehicle. When did they ever race against each other? Seriously, at one point Warren Oates, driver of the GTO, gets into the opposing car, a souped up '55 Chevy, and hangs out with The Driver, while The Driver's partner, The Mechanic, takes the GTO to town to get a carburetor leak repaired. It never, ever appeared to me that anyone was serious about completing the race or doing much more than hang out, figuring out what to do next. Same thing with The Girl (Laurie Bird); what was her deal? She just showed up in the middle of a scene in the back seat of the Chevy, and neither The Driver or The Mechanic was fazed enough to ask her who she was or what she wanted, much less what she was doing in the car.

Somewhere in Washington, DC's dead letter office sits an envelope with two vehicle 'pink slips' because no one ever showed up to claim their titles.

Three IMDb rating points for this flick - one for James Taylor, one for Dennis Wilson, and one for Warren Oates. And that's being generous. Wait, make that two for Oates and a half each for the other two guys.