Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2694 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-06-18
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Synopsis
Cult film director Monte Hellman follows up his legendary westerns THE SHOOTING and RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND with another sterling film, this time set on the paved highways of early 1970s America. Making their acting debuts, musicians Dennis Wilson and James Taylor play a pair of drag-racing drifters who battle against willing competitors all along the back roads of America, encountering a wild cast of characters. After stopping for lunch one afternoon, Taylor (The Driver) and Wilson (The Mechanic) discover a young woman in their back seat (Laurie Bird, credited as (The Girl). The newly formed trio continues to head east, and places a risky bet with Warren Oates after bumping into each other at a gas station. The first automobile to arrive in Washington D.C. is the winner. The prize: the loser's car (Taylor and Wilson drive a 1955 Chevy, while Oates pilots a 1970 Pontiac GTO). Strangely enough, rather than turning into a relentless fight to the finish, none of the participants seem too worried about picking up the pace. In fact, they act as if they're afraid of reaching their destinations, spurning an endless series of sidetracks that turns Hellman's film into a broad existential metaphor and cementing its place as one of 1970s Hollywood's bravest motion pictures.

Customer Reviews

The Definitive '70s Road Movie
This is THE film that for me defines the "Road Movie" genre. This is a window into endless days and roads, there's no particular start or end, just stark, listless and sometimes uncomfortable punctuation on the way to nowhere. It also protrays the cultural no-mans land of the post hippie period perfectly, the half bitten relationships between the main players, lacking sentiment so profuondly that the saccarin smiles that would fill the cinema later in this decade seem like grotesque parade floats. This film is mesmerising, once seen you can't forget it, it took me a long time (and a lot of money) to get it on import, here it is, easy!

A love-it-or-hate-it movie. Personally I love it.
Read the comments on the IMDB site and you'll find plenty of people who obviously watched it thinking they were getting another "American Graffiti" or 1971 version of "The Fast And The Furious" and came away hugely disappointed - little action, monosyllabic and underplayed acting, no real story and a strange unsatisfying ending. But it's all those things that make the film so wonderful! It's a perfect late 60s/early 70s road movie. Two guys who just drive about in a 1955 Chevy (so stripped that it doesn't even have a paint job) challenging local hotshots to street drag races until they bump into a strange bullshitter who challenges them to race across the US, and off they go. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson beautifully underplay their parts. They just exist to race and so anything else, talk included, is really superfluous. A girl hitcher gets picked up at one point and ends up walking away from the pair of them obviously bemused and somewhat pissed off that despite her attempts to make one jealous of the other they really just don't care about her. And you get all the talk you need from the wonderful Warren Oates, who plays the GTO driver brilliantly - the character's just too old to have `gotten' the sixties and knows they he's missed something. Every hitcher he picks up as he races across the country gets told a different story, and his sense of jealousy for what he thinks Taylor and Wilson has is palpable. It's beautifully shot and proceeds at a langorous, leisurely pace. The ending is what one can only describe at "cinematic". If you want thrills-and-spills then give it a miss. If you want to see a cult gem, one of the coolest films ever made, check it out. I first saw it twenty odd years ago and it became my favourite film; the nice thing is, twenty odd years later it still is.

Road Movie with a difference
I've been waiting for this to be re-released in this country for years. I remember seeing it a couple of times on TV. For anyone who's into this period of American movie making this can be considered a classic. For anyone who's interested in James Taylors' career it's very interesting to watch. Why it's taken until 2006 to get a release seems strange, although I expect it'll only appeal to niche markets and true movie lovers unless there's some promotion. Shame.