University of Virginia Library

CINEMA

'Two-Lane' Runs One Way

By KEN BARRY

"Two-Lane Blacktop" is an
example of a movie type stuck
badly in a rut, spinning its wheels
laboriously and showing little
promise of ever getting out. Its
features fit all too easily into the
old capitalized categories: it serves
up, with all the elegance of a
short-order cook, The Alienated
Anti-Hero, The Pathetically
Immature Adult, The Rootless and
Amoral Anti-Heroine, and The
Endless Search. "Two-Lane" shows
nothing the old Marlon Brando
motorcycle flicks didn't show
except, perhaps, fatigue and
certainly new heights in
line-mumbling.

The film has something to do
with automobile racing and
virtually nothing to do with
anything more profound or urgent.
The Big Race, which edges out a
number of smaller races to become
a fuzzy focal point of the non-plot,
is a highway and by-way roll from
Texas to Washington D.C. Vying in
this epic drag-race are James
Taylor, Dennis Wilson, and Laurie
Bird in one car (a supercharged
circa '55 Chevy jalopy) and Warren
Oates in the other (a yellow 1970
GTO, fully equipped, factory air,
etc....) Taylor and Co. make their
way in the world as drag sharks,

duping into doomed races people
who've never seen a '55 Chevy
outside of a junk yard.

Oates is a 30-year old little boy
with a tootsie-roll ego wrapped up
in a $5,000 car and an endless
stream of I'm-a-big-man rigmarole
reserved exclusively for
unsuspecting hitch-hikers (sample:
"I've just been out on the West
Coast testing jet aircraft and....").
Less colorful but no less pitiful are
Taylor, who only resorts to speech
to sucker in racing victims, Wilson,
whose conversational flair never
surpasses "I've got to go check the
valves"; and Miss Bird, who
occasionally sparkles with pungent
gems like "Hey, stop! I've got to
take a leak."

So the characters don't say
anything. Does the picture? I think
not; the whole seems at least as dull
as its component parts. Sure, there
have been great books and films
about drab, pointless
existences—but those works arouse
an interest in the "what" and
"why" of human anonymity and
inertia that this two hour drag
across America never really pauses
to consider.

There is a moment or two when
"Two-Lane" tries to distill a trace
of the sad wistfulness that envelops
and enriches a Steinbeck novel or a
film like "Midnight Cowboy." For
instance, the Aging Drifter (Oates)
at one point murmurs his
Impossible Dream to the Nubile
Drifter(Miss Bird). It goes
something like this: "Let's go to
Arizona, where the sun is warm and
the roads are straight. And we'll
build a house there...yeah, a
house." It's an attempt all right,
but it's so corny and banal that it
could function only as a parody of
what the film pretentiously tries
here to do. Unfortunately,
"Two-Lane Blacktop" lacks any
self-directed sense of humor—the
only saving grace I know of for a
film of its class.

(Now at the Paramount)