VANISHING POINT [1971] review

VANISHING POINT is truly an American movie, and truly an American movie from the 1970’s. This movie consists of four main elements: a powerful 1970 Dodge Challenger, a man of singular purpose, the creation of folklore, and Freedom. This is one of those kinds of movies that you think to yourself, “no way in hell could a movie like this ever get made today.” Imagine a movie free of gimmicks, of product placement (unless you count Dodge), of jackass dialogue, then one can begin to get the world VANISHING POINT exists in.

…As we get to slowly know Kowalski through a series of brief flashbacks, we learn that the man we’ve been driving along with at breakneck speed for most of the movie has a past consisting of achievement, but let down, pursuit of glory, but never quite reaching it, and perhaps most importantly, the loss of hope. Hence his job of running cars from Colorado to California is quite fitting, and when he takes charge of delivering a truly classic American muscle car, the stage of the movie is set, and the viewer doesn’t even realize perhaps until the very final scene what kind of journey we were actually on.

…For someone who loves cars like I do, I could just listen to the sound of that massive V-8 engine vroom across the screen and be content. The way Kowalski drives it is a thing of beauty. He drives it like a Man would. … There is just no better setting for a car movie, a road movie, a movie about Freedom than the American West. A single two-lane road stretching into infinity into mountains, into desert, into the setting sun, to me there is no great symbol of Freedom and infinite possibility. Imagine roaring down such a road at 160mph with nothing and no one being able to touch you. That is the journey VANISHING POINT takes its viewers on.

…***SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL SCENE***

…It took me a day to digest the meaning of it and to understand it. Kowalski went out with a smile on his face, having never compromised in his life, he went out on his own terms, at a moment of purest Freedom with his final sight being that of the West, of the rising sun. I could only ever hope to pass from this world myself in such an ideal moment.

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