Two-Lane Blacktop

this whole film kind of felt like a charade to me - the aborted drag race at the start, the superficial characters, the supposed race to DC which seems like a front to drag anyone into their chaos that they can...feels like you can reach quite deeply into this as use it as metaphor for post 60's hippy USA Warren Oates character is equal parts ingratiating and agonizing, the complete self mythologizing of himself speaks to the idea of Americana and Route 66

Another existential '70s classic from Monte Hellman. Oates is supurb as "GTO."

The road can be both liberating and isolating. The characters are rarely alone (the young group has each other and the GTO is constantly picking up hitchhikers) and yet they're alone most of the time. I like here that the director wasn't afraid to let the characters just be quiet. The racing scenes don't do much for me but there are some really neat sequences. The ending in pretty interesting different given some of its contemporaries.