Sofa Cinema

Gifts - NEW | Help | Sign in

Hotlists: Rent games; New releases; Coming soon; In cinemas now; Top rated; Most popular; All-time favourites; Divided opinions

Games: DS; GameCube; PS2; PS3; PSP; Wii; Xbox; Xbox 360

Collections: 100 Wild Westerns; 100 Most Wanted; 100 Hot Hits; 100 must-see movies; 100 Big Adventures; 100 Horror Films; 100 Cops & Robbers; 100 Rom-Coms

Hi-Def: Blu-ray; HD DVD

Vanishing Point (1971)

Average rating

(69%)

Starring:	Barry Newman \| Dean Jagger \| Cleavon Little \| Robert Donner \| Paul Koslo \| Anthony James \| Timothy Scott \| Gilda Texter
Director:	Richard C. Sarafian
Studio:	20TH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Run time:	95 mins
Genres:	Action/Adventure
Languages:	English
Dubbed:	French, German, Spanish
Hearing-impaired:	English, German
Subtitles:	Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish
Released:	September 09, 2002

In VANISHING POINT, an ex-racecar driver (Barry Newman) gets high on Benzedrine and leads the police on a hectic cross-country chase. On his strange journey, he meets numerous odd characters.

Rating of 2 stars out of 5

Fast cars are the stars of this remake of the 1971 cult classic. When race-car driver Viggo Mortensen learns that his wife's (ER's Christine Elise) pregnancy has turned life threatening, he desperately races across four states in a super-charged car in order to be by her side. Through a series of misunderstandings he soon becomes a wanted man, with the police and FBI in hot pursuit. Writer/director Charles Robert Carner revs up the action but eventually runs out of gas, despite a good cast and scenic desert locations.

Rating of 1 stars out of 5
Halliwell's Film Guide

Strange, fashionable action suspenser which is better to look at than to understand.

Highest rated reviews

15 out of 15 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 4 stars
Vanishing Point - a cult classic

Steven Walker from London, England, 8th July, 2004

The film centres around the protagonist Kowalski, an ex-cop, ex-racing driver and Vietnam vet. who now delivers cars for a living. At the start of the film he has a bet with a colleague that he can drive a Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in under 24 hours. Due to some erratic, high speed driving and an incident with some hitchhikers he is pursued by the police. With the help of a blind radio DJ and his police scanner he is able to avoid capture until the climatic ending.

There are numerous reasons why I think is this an excellent film. The main one being, it captures the zeitgeist perfectly. The Vietnam war shaped so much of politcal and social thinking at the time that it's influence can clearly be seen in Vanishing Point which is essentially a car chase movie. Early Seventies counter-culture was based around the anti-establishment, personal freedom ethos of the hippy movement due to large scale dissention towards American involvement in Vietnam. Kowalski is an embodiment of this school of thought, he was a cop and vet. both establishment jobs. But he was unable to function in either role and for most of the film is on the run from the police. Now he drives across vast empty deserts, high on speed displaying his desire to feel free. This notion also acts as an explanation for his decisions at the end. In essence, his soul is still free and he is sticking it to 'the man' at the same time.

Having said this there are other possible reasons for Kowalski's action which adds to the enjoyment for me. For example, through flashbacks we learn of his past occupations and that his girlfriend/wife was killed in an accident. Consequently it is his inability to fit in, the loss of his lover and a mind clouded by drugs which combine to create the stark ending to the film.

A tight script, clinical direction and an excellent performance by Barry Newman as Kowalski produces an action-packed ride which entertains from beginning to end. Personally, I like it for the symbolism and the ambiguity of the main characters motivations but it can be enjoyed purely for the fast car chases and high-impact ending.

Recently, the film was used as the basis for the video Show Me How To Live by Audioslave proving that it is a genuine cult classic.

Read all highest rated reviews

7 out of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 5 stars
Speed means freedom of the soul

Dreadnaut from London, 1st April, 2004

Kowalski is an ex-cop and racing driver, now working as a car delivery driver. He makes a bet with his dealer buddy that he can deliver a white supercharged 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours.

Starting out tired, but fuelled by a handful of speed pills, he attracts the attention of the police virtually from the start. His bid to outrun and outwit the law is then followed on police radio, and somehow telepathically, by the blind, charismatic, jive talkin' radio DJ 'Super Soul', who gives Kowalski advice, and provides some of the awesome soundtrack to this movie.

Attracting huge publicity along the way, the enigmatic loner Kowalski attracts the support of the freaks and outcasts he meets across the desert, and becomes something like a bogeyman to the redneck townsfolk and police.

Like Easy Rider on speed, this is a beautiful, poignant, and above all cool road movie about one man's quest for freedom, beauty and something pure, that always seems to lie just beyond the horizon, in a land of prejudice, hypocrisy and pain.

Read all highest rated reviews

Sofa Cinema

Vanishing Point (1971)

Highest rated reviews

Most recent reviews