Vanishing Point

Plot synopsis:
Barry Newman plays a car delivery driver named Kowalski who works for Argo's Car Delivery Service in Denver, Colorado and is assigned to deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger to San Francisco. Flashbacks which appear throughout the movie hint that he has either lost everything he has ever wanted and was reduced to taking the job of a car delivery driver as a last resort, or he is (what is called today) an adrenaline junkie. He is a Medal of Honor winning Vietnam veteran, a former law enforcement officer, former race car driver, and former motorcycle racer. He lost his job as a cop apparently after being framed in a drug bust, perhaps in retaliation for preventing his partner from raping a young girl. He seemingly gave up his automobile and motorcycle racing careers after two near-fatal accidents. He flashes back to a girlfriend, first in a snow-covered landscape, then at the California shore. Vera offers Kowalski marijuana, and comments on his war wound. Vera appears to be Kowalski's great love, and her death while surfing appears to be a major factor in Kowalski's alienation and resignation to death in the film.As the movie opens, Kowalski is near the end of his chase by the California Highway Patrol, where two bulldozers and a CBS News truck are setting up. After seeing the bulldozers, he turns around, only to run into three patrol cars further up the road. He then drives off the road to think, then gets back into the car and continues to drive back toward the roadblock. As the white Challenger passes a black Chrysler Imperial, the movie freezes, and the Challenger vanishes on Sunday at 10:02 am.The Imperial continues on, and the film then flashes back to Denver, Colorado, two days earlier on Friday at 11:30 pm, where Kowalski's journey began. He has just arrived in Denver with a black Chrysler Imperial he is delivering from San Francisco. His supervisor demands he get some rest, but Kowalski insists on taking on a delivery back to San Francisco that night. Kowalski is assigned to deliver the white Challenger. He stops at a biker bar to buy some Benzedrine pills and tells his dealer Jake (Lee Weaver) that he must get to San Francisco by 3 o'clock the next day (although the delivery is not due until Monday). They make a small bet (the cost of the speed), and Kowalski takes off at high speed out of Denver.Later Saturday morning near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, two motorcycle cops appear in Kowalski's rear view mirror and try to get him to pull over for speeding. He runs one off the road and, after stopping and seeing that the officer is unhurt, Kowalski takes off again and shakes the other officer by jumping across a trench. Kowalski is chased across the states of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada and into California, with the police unable to catch him. The whole way, Kowalski has his radio tuned to the station KOW, which is broadcasting out of Goldfield, Nevada. A blind African-American DJ at KOW known as Super Soul listens to the police radio frequency and encourages Kowalski to evade the police. Super Soul seems to understand Kowalski and, through a writer's conceit, seems to see and hear Kowalski's reactions.At one point Kowalski stops for gas at a remote station, and upon seeing the young woman at the gas pump, flashes back to a scene in his police career in which an older police officer molests a young woman of similar appearance in the back of a police car in an attempt to extract information about drug dealing. Kowalski intervenes to save the girl. In the present day, it is left somewhat unclear if this is the same woman or someone who reminds Kowalski of her.With the help of Super Soul, who calls Kowalski "the last American hero" on his radio show, Kowalski begins to gain attention among the counterculture and news media. Bikers and hippies flock to KOW radio in Goldfield to offer support. In a police chase in Nevada, Kowalski finds himself surrounded by police and flees into the desert. There, he blows a left front tire. After changing it, he encounters a rattlesnake and a snake catcher behind his car while placing the original tire in the trunk. Kowalski is helped by the old man who catches snakes in the desert to escape a police chopper that is now searching the desert for him. The old man leads him to a Pentecostal sect that reluctantly gives him fuel. The old man then redirects Kowalski back to the highway. There, he picks up two gay hitchhikers stranded en route to San Francisco with a "Just Married" sign in their rear window. They become combative and try to hold him up at gunpoint, but Kowalski throws them out of the car.In the afternoon of Saturday, a police officer and some unidentified thugs, shouting racial epithets, raid the KOW studio and physically assault Super Soul and his engineer. Near the California state line, Kowalski is helped by a hippie biker and his nude girlfriend, who has followed Kowalski's police career and made a collage of articles about his story. The impression is that she was infatuated with Kowalski, but she is unable to finish what she meant to say and rides away on her motorcycle. They discover that Super Soul's encouragement is now being directed by the police to entrap Kowalski; they give him more Benzedrine pills, and help him get through the roadblock trap by strapping a motorbike with a red light and air raid siren to the top of the Challenger, fooling the police into clearing the roadblock for him to speed through, putting him in California by Saturday at 7:12 pm. This means that 3:00 pm on SaturdayKowalski's original goalhas passed without comment. Kowalski calls Jake the dealer on a payphone, who has read about the chase in the newspaper. Kowalski reassures him that he's fine and still intends to deliver the car on Monday. However, the California police have put sensors on back roads that allow them to track Kowalski as he drives through the night.In the UK release of the film, Kowalski then picks up a mysterious hitchhiker (played by Charlotte Rampling). Kowalski accepts marijuana from her despite being shown refusing drugs (other than speed) several times in the past. He stops the car when he starts feeling stoned. She says she has been, "waiting for him, everywhere and since forever." When he awakens the next morning, she is gone, without a trace. According to interviews with Barry Newman and commentary from the director, the hitchhiker was a representation of death finally catching up with Kowalski.It is still early Sunday morning when Kowalski makes it to Cisco, California (a vacant cattle town in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of San Francisco, but actually filmed in the remote village of Cisco, Utah, abandoned today). There, with the California Highway Patrol in hot pursuit, Kowalski catches up to the opening of the film and crashes into the two bulldozers set up by the police as a roadblock, producing the fatal fireball of his death.

Tags: comedy, neo noir, cult, flashback, insanity, revenge

Review:
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.
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, VP 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 no-nonsense 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, all of which had long made the USA a wonderful place--and sadly is no longer, having been 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 childish craving for perfect, high-fuel-efficiency safety and security.
Kowalski's trip becomes a road trip of existentialism as he runs across various strange characters: Solitary hippies, gay bandits, a boogie-woogie snake handling Christian cult, and the blind soul station DJ (brilliantly played by Cleavon Little) who is attempting to guide him on his journey from within the car's radio.Topping it off is a great soundtrack, breathtaking cinematography and direction, and automotive action that has seen no equal.
Is it because of the truckload of speed he takes at the beginning of the movie (draw your own metaphors between Kowalski's internal use of the noun and external use of the verb)?Or is it the road, the infinite expanses of the Southwest, the silence, the freedom, the sound of the motor surging, the tires spinning, the wheels gobbling up and sitting out the black asphalt?
Not everyone was meant to hear it, just like not everyone has perfect pitch or the ability to wiggle their ears.This movie drove me (pun intended) to take the handle kowalski and buy a Challenger of my own (flame red, 1973, you see the 1970 R/Ts are very hard to get).It probably won't do the same for you, but if you've ever been driving down the open road and wondered what would happen if you _didn't_ get off at the next exchange, in fact if you never got off at all, then this film is for you.And I hope the next ignoramus who compares this masterful film to "The Dukes of Hazzard" loses his brakes and plows into a line of parked Harleys outside some bar with a name like Whiskey Junction or the Dew Drop Inn..
And for a US-made movie, it is pretty pure.If you do not know it, the primary narrative is essentially no narrative: a muscle car speeding across the desert chased by police, initially for speeding and ultimately just to exert power.
If you waste too much time with backgrounds, character development, story etc the really important stuff starts lacking (the car as an instrument of freedom, the road, the desert...).
"Vanishing Point" asks the question and, like other films of this kind before "Smokey & the Bandit" brought the genre to an end, lets us ponder the answer on our own.
'Vanishing Point', a chase movie from the early 1970s, can be easily related to other films of the same (or similar) genres.
But it's outlaw philosophy has more in common with later, sillier films like 'Smokey and the Bandit' and 'The Cannonball Run' (in 'Easy Rider', the heroes simply want to mind their own business; but in 'Vanishing Point', beating the system is the end in itself).
This might make the film seem more political, except for the complete vapidness of its central concept: that "freedom" can be defined as the right to burn enormous quantities of oil at life-endangering speeds (indeed, it appears that one of the ways in which the mainstream has persecuted our hero is to attempt to prevent him from driving when drunk).
Yet without the pseudo-philosophical justification, this is a movie without point or purpose, whose central character acts without any rational motivation.For all that, the chase itself is gripping, though it's strange (especially for a European) to see what qualified as a sports car in America 30 years ago: this one has huge front and rear overhangs and ridiculously soft suspension.
But the worst thing about this movie are its bizarre diversions from the main plot, which include: the cheesiest love scene I can remember; a strange, homophobia-tinged encounter with a couple of gay would-be car-hijackers; a racist attack, apropos of nothing; and, most oddly of all, a meeting with a motorcycling, naked blonde in the middle of the desert.
The exception is Cleavon Little as the hyperactive DJ Super-Soul; his interplay with Newman is novel, some of his dialogue is memorable (indeed, his rambling about Kowalski and the 'police Nazis' was quoted by Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses twenty years later) and his input gives the film some badly needed impetus.
It's a cult classic for a reason; as the failed 1997 remake demonstrated, a movie like Vanishing Point would not work nearly as well in another era.It also works reasonably well as a straight driving film.
However, Vanishing Point is not a particularly conventional film; like most good films it moves itself forward well, but it is the film's style and allegorical nature that largely keeps the interest and pushes the film above the ruck of many other driving movies.
With the underground supporting him and the cops chasing him, our dead-eyed hero heads off into the desert seemingly uncaring of the fate that awaits him.This film is one that you seem to know what you're getting into before you watch it if you want to enjoy it because it is not a mainstream film but rather one that will serve a smaller cult audience better.
This film delivers cubic inches of muscle car action, as Kowalski (Barry Newman) jumps his '70 Dodge Challenger across washouts, dices with a trashy looking Jaguar, and battles the police on and off the road, all the while wearing a rather disturbed expression.
Unfortunately, the film uses up most of its gas and rubber in the first hour, and the rest seems to be about Kowalski's interaction with the various characters he meets on the road.Unfortunately, this is where I don't really get the movie.
Kowalski's character is very much representative of the concept of freedom and openness.The same qualities that led to the creation of a great nation but the deterioration of which is beautifully portrayed in subtle ways.The crash seen could be seen as the ultimate protest of free soul against the oppressive and over powering bureaucracy.The chase sequences have been carefully taken.The white car is symbolic of white horse since horse could be considered as the correct representation of wild west.It also denotes freedom of both expressions and actions.The character riding the white car could be equated to a knight riding white horse ie a medieval times take over.The idea is the dark forces which existed during the medieval times are still relevant.Even though ultimate victory cannot be said to be fully with either good or bad forces the director has clearly portrayed that such bold fight against establishments are bound to happen throughout history of mankind ; one such as of Kowalski's.The brave fight put up by kowalski , the refusal to accept defeat,considering death more noble than surrendering oneself to evil forces are typical behavior and values which contributed to the creation of one of the greatest nations of the world.The deterioration of these characters is painfully portrayed by the director.A must see movie .......
Beyond an exciting story, "Vanishing Point" shows some great commercial views of Denver and Colorado that now are, sadly, lost to history.During the early part of the film, we're treated to numerous location shots of 16th Street downtown and several industrial areas.
It's one final act of defiance against a life with a rapidly vanishing point (hence the title in case you're not paying attention.) If it is to do with freedom, it's only in that he frees himself from his miserable life.Even if this is the meaning behind it (if there is one at all) the film doesn't deal with it very well.Likewise, the characters he meets along the way are woefully underused.
The nude motorcycle rider - let's face it - she was just there for us guys to look at (not that I mind, but why not give her a reason to be there rather than some contrived idea that Kowalski rescued her when she was a kid?)On the plus side, I did enjoy the car chases, although considering they're the main focus of the film, they weren't even as good as those in other movies (Bullitt, French Connection etc.) Likewise, the music was good, but not great.
Released in 1971, "Vanishing Point" stars Barry Newman as Kowalski, a pill-popping former racer and police officer, who bets that he can deliver a supercharged car from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours.
Despite the many car chases, "Vanishing Point" is surreal and even languid, embellished by a listless score (e.g the opening) and acid rock tracks throughout; while I don't like the former, most of the latter tracks are good and fit the ambiance of the movie.Then there's the naked blond on the motorcycle sequence.
Lastly, despite it being the "free love" era (1970), Kowalski was much older (and arguably nobler) than the average hippie; as such, he didn't feel it proper to take advantage of the mate of the guy who was selflessly helping him (at least not without his clear permission).The movie runs 99 minutes and was shot in Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Arizona.GRADE: B- COMMENTARY ON THE MEANING ***SPOILER ALERT*** (Don't read further unless you've seen the movie) In an interview Barry Newman very seriously explained Kowalski's actions at the end: "He thought he could make it through; and that was the reason for the smile just prior to the impact." I don't question this since the actor himself would have more insights about the movie than the viewer, but even his answer is ambiguous.
In any case, his mental exhortations go unheeded and he is left a disillusioned man.Some have suggested Kowalski is another Christ figure beloved of hippy films of the day but one is not left comforted and inspired by Vanishing Point's ending.
If you are a fan of American muscle cars, or more specifically a Dodge Challenger in this case then you might like Vanishing Point.
Perhaps it's the drugs, the endless driving in the desert, but he acts as if wherever he goes there will be a way out, a shortcut, a dirt road he can take.Vanishing Point is a surprisingly empty movie.
We can see an unstoppable quest of liberty from the hero, but the acting is really poor and the background story of the main character seem to have been forgotten to the profit of car chase scenes.If you like action movies, you better go for big blockbusters rather than go for this one.
For lovers of this film he is forever carved into memory as the enigmatic character that screenwriter Malcom Hart intended him to be...Through the eyes "Supersoul" (Cleavon Little):"And there goes the Challenger, being chased by the blue, blue meanies on wheels."The vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver, the last American hero, the electric Shinta, the demigod, the super driver of the Golden West."Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful lone driver, the police numbers are getting' closer, closer, closer to our soul hero in his soul-mobile."Yeah, baby.
Newman looks right as the present-day, haggard Kowalski, yet is perfect as the fresh-faced uniformed cop he was in his youth and the car and motorcycle racer he was after he fell from grace.What could have been monotonous driving-and-thinking or mind-numbing crash after crash is deftly handled by director Sarafian in a balanced mix of stunts and interludes.
In Death Proof, one of the leading characters repeatedly hero-worships and refers to Vanishing Point's protagonist, Kowalski, who is a car delivery driver.The film was the inspiration for a number of rock music projects (such as an album by Primal Scream also called Vanishing Point).
Car delivery driver Kowalski is handed the job of driving a 1970 Dodge Challenger from Colorado to California, but he also accepts a bet that he'd reach his destination in no less than 15 hours.
Super Soul is the local radio DJ who pretty much gives the energy the movie needs to not be a sole-car-chase film.
(Note that some say that this movie served as the inspiration for the great Cannonball open-road races.)It's also about a lot of other things, like choices we make, freedom, the clash of subcultures, what constitutes good and evil - and how they can get confused, especially in a period of deep cultural change.
The film is a cross-country car chase with the cops in pursuit of a lone anti-establishment ex racer played by Barry Newman.
The movie is unique in the sense in that it purposely does not answer these questions.This will always be my favorite car chase film of all times.
Of course, a film with just a guy driving down a road would be quite dull, so we are given some interludes of Kowalski meeting other people as real life interrupts his introspection, but in the end he decides his own destiny.P.S. The car chases are cool too!!.
At the same time Barry Newman fills in the role as enigmatically as possible; we're never totally sure what this guy's motive is to go for broke in delivering a car across states to a little s***-hole town at 100 miles an hour, which makes it part of the fun.It's a high-stakes story of daring cop-chases, detour through a desert, help from strangers, and a fatalistic ending that seems more bizarre and shocking than that of an Easy Rider.
His best friend is his 'up' dealer, and his name is Kowolski, first last and only.Vanishing Point doesn't take very long to jump into its plot as Kowolski is given the task of delivering a 'Challenger' to Frisco (San Francisco), and then buys a handful of ups/speed from his buddy, making a bet that he can make it to Frisco by the very next day in the process.Although Kowolski is in fact a very 'cool' and clever guy who's fun to watch, the drive of this movie essentially comes from the music, and a blind African American DJ named Super Soul.
A true American Classic.So many movies that year fell by the way side totally unremembered.This film delivered and always will.Vanishing Point smokes like a ten-ton bomb that waits to go off at the very end.Loved it.
Kowalski, the anti-hero of "Vanishing Point" is looking for freedom.This film should be classified under "fantasy".
Kowalski (Barry Newman) is a speed freak in more ways than one, popping uppers so that he drive 24/7, having bet his drug dealer that he can deliver a supercharged car to California in record time; in doing so, he becomes a wanted man by the police.The car chase is a staple of the action movie genre, but Vanishing Point, by director Richard C.
As such, the plot is virtually non-existant, the film largely reliant on the vehicular action which sadly isn't jaw-dropping enough to sustain interest for almost 100 minutes.Being a product of the hippie generation, the whole thing is given a pseudomythological, existentialist vibe, in which driver Kowalski is elevated to legendary anti-hero status by DJ Super Soul (Cleavon Little), and there are plenty of off-beat characters along the way, all of which has secured the film a cult following, but I found the whole thing highly over-rated and ultimately pretty boring.On a more positive note, the cinematography is great, while the mythical road warrior angle and much of the shots seem to have influenced George Miller's Mad Max movies (leading to Fury Road, which for me, is the ultimate car-chase movie)..
Our hero is Kowalski (Barry Newman) and his mission is to deliver a beautiful white car (the film's actual lead) an 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T crossing a few states in a 
Vanishing Point seems to be one of those films on the cusp between the 60's era psychedelia and the 70's tough guy cop chase movies.
Kowalski knows that, just like the muscle car, his time has come and gone, so he pushes himself on an almost impossible journey that he knows will end in his death.
Kowalski knows its coming, but rather than fear it, he drives into the next world at maximum speed, smiling and with him dies the last of the great muscle cars.Whether you agree with my synopsis or not, this is one of the great movies of all time and if you do nothing else in your life, you have to see this film and preferably on a big screen with surround sound..