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Summary: The 1970 dodge challenger in its best movie
Review: Did you know this movie was first shown in the uk first?The networks wanted to see how it did there first and it was a hit!Then later released in the U.S.
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Summary: Another exciting Cult Classic!
Review: Drama, danger, and the human spirit! It's all here in the VANISHING POINT. Have seen the original movie several times, and am still impressed with the car chase scenes. A must have for Mopar fans, expecially those who remember the glorious muscle car days. The car chase scenes bring to the movie what the plot doesn't. If you like car chases, this is one movie that you should watch.
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Summary: The best car chase movie I have ever seen.
Review: This has to be one of the best car chase movies in the world. If you like Mopars, you will love this movie. A must have movie for every Chrysler fan.
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Summary: The Ultimate Car Chase
Review: I have to love this movie because when I first saw it I was the proud owner of a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T with a 383 Magnum and Hurst pistol grip 4-speed on the floor! Saw it at the drive-in movie---was a mere 19 years old at the time, but I do remember being not entirely safe upon leaving the drive-in that night. Have wanted that same car for many years now, but the closest I have been able to come up with is a copy of Vanishing Point! Being older now (47), I can see where the plot of the movie is rather shallow, however, I rated the movie on what it should be rated on---the car chase scenes! Still one of the best ever!!
Rating: 
Summary: Fast paced action; great cars
Review: the movie was definitely something you had to see in 71 in order to fully understand what was happening in the life of Kowalski. If you picked it up today, and watched it for the first time, you probably wouldn't understand. Just watch it for the action - don't try to read anything into it.
Rating:
Summary: brilliant
Review: The ultimate car chase movie. Particularly revealing and far seeing, since it preceded the 55 mph speed limit by 4 years.Guy drives fast, doesn't hurt anyone, is somehow haunted by his past, but he's basically decent. Police take it into their heads to stop him.Real speed scenes , not fabricated fast-forward one-second takes of someone doing 35 mph. Beautiful car too, Dodge Challenger. The original idea for the movie came from Cabrera Infante, a Cuban writer.
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Summary: High speed race and chase with a classic musclecar
Review: An excellent movie about high speed racing across a few states. Gives new meaning to road rage when a friend makes a bet on a time deadline for delivering a car. The car is the real star of the movie a 1971 Dodge Challenger. This movie is one of the definitive car movies and is always a hit with gearheads and musclecars lovers. The plot may be shaky but the car chases and action make up for it. If you love classic cars and disregard for vehicle and traffic safety this movie is for you.
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Summary: Much more than a car chase movie
Review: This movie held me spellbound the first time I saw it and is still capable of this after countless viewings. This is more than just a car chase movie, it actually has depth and a story to tell. The scenery of the great American West is also first rate and the soundtrack never fails to set the mood.The story of the main character, an auto delivery driver named Kowalski unfolds as he takes delivery of a white '70 Dodge Challenger which is as he puts it `souped up to 160' and proceeds to drive it from Denver to San Francisco. His plan, however is to do this in 15 hours to win a bet. As Kowalski makes his journey his life is revealed to us through flashbacks and recollections which are usually triggered by what is currently happening to him in real time. Through these the viewer learns that despite his apparent lawless behavior, Kowalski is a man of good character. It is this good character, sense of duty and strong moral code that led to Kowalski's fallout with the establishment. He had been a decorated war hero and was honorably discharged from the military. A few years later, he was a decorated policeman. However, when he saw his police partner behaving in an unsavory fashion, he reacted. His reward was to be dishonorably discharged from the police force. This ultimately led Kowalski down the path to where we are introduced to him. One of the big things that drew me into this movie is that it doesn't hand you the explanations on a silver platter. Instead it allows you to think about it and draw your own conclusions long after you've seen it. Some reviewers on IMDB have already done a great job of touching on the philosophies of freedom and individualism prevalent in this movie, so I won't waste the time trying to top those. I'll add that I feel this is a type of an expressionist film. Kowalski is kind of an `Everyman' who is on a journey to find his place in the grand scheme of things. Along his path he encounters various characters that watch over him and help him along, but there are also those who wish to shut him down. Whether you think the conclusion of Kowalski's journey is successful or not is up to you. Another big plus is the realism in the driving scenes, where the drivers are actually driving their machines and occasionally things happen like tires going flat or the car needs fuel. Most modern car chase sequences leave me wanting with all of the computer generated car moves and general lack of realism. I know they sometimes got it wrong back then too, doing things like obviously speeding the film up. In this one though, they got it right. The driving here brings us into that realm of manhandling 4000 lbs. of American Iron, in all the glory of big-block V8 roar, screaming smoking tires, and hands grappling with the steering wheel. Another thing that's cool to me about this type of movie is the appearance of the car. At the beginning, the car is resplendent in gleaming chrome and white paint. As the story moves along, the car gradually gets a more dusty battered countenance. I won't spoil the end, but those who've seen it know. The final things that tie this whole thing together are the soundtrack and scenery. They seem to go hand in hand, from the upbeat rock & roll as Kowalski starts out to the stirring guitar strains during the thoughtful moments. I also cannot say enough about the scenery, which really draws the viewer in. It ranges from the mountains of Colorado, across Utah and into the searing Nevada desert. In closing, I'll say that this is one of my favorite movies. It won't be understood by everyone, but those of us who fantasize about getting in a classic car and blasting down an open two-lane highway devoid of SUV's, sport sedans and minivans will likely get it.
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Summary: A Dirge For A Dying America
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. Inhabiting a sort of twilight zone between "here" and "there," a sort of peculiar purgatory, these restless specters cannot find any peace or place, so they instead instinctively press madly on to some obscure and unknown destination, the relentless journey itself being the only reason and justification.
Disc jockey Super Soul (Cleavon Little) and delivery driver Kowalski (Barry Newman) are two of these specters, marginal but decent, intelligent men who can't or won't live in burgeoning competing cultures which in reality have offered them very little of worth or substance, despite their own personal sacrifices. Kowalski himself had tried to "fit in" with the Establishment as a soldier and police officer and later, attempted to do the same with the blossoming 1960s counterculture, but soon disappointingly found that they both were ridden with their own various forms of dishonesty and insincerity. Personal honor, self-reliance, honesty, justice and genuine respect--Kowalski's stock in trade--were tragically valued very little by either, despite each one's shrill and haughty claims to the contrary.
Moreover, it's no accident Newman's character has a Polish surname; the Poles throughout their history have created a very rich and unique Slavic culture largely based upon just such a "marginality"--being geographically jammed between two powerful and radically different historic enemies, Germany and Russia, and never being able to fully identify with either one, at often great cost to themselves. 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, "Vanishing Point" 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 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 straight from the minds of Mark Twain and Nelson Algren, all of which had long made the USA a wonderful place. "Vanishing Point" poignantly shows us that such a world was already slipping away in 1971, and now, over 30 years later, it sadly is but a fond memory, having been brutally 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 infantile craving for perfect, high-fuel-efficiency safety and security, rather than individual liberty, at all costs, a "brave new world" where simply wanting to be left alone amidst Orwellian chants of "it's for the children" and "either you're with us or against us" is now tantamount to near-treason.
The DVD contains both the US and UK releases of the film; the UK release, I believe, is a much more satisfying film, as it has the original scenes deleted from the US version. As an aside, Super Soul's radio station call letters, KOW, are in fact the ones for a country & western station in San Diego.
Rating:
Summary: seventies
Review: this movie is totally awesome. i really liked it. it has a lot of action and drugs and a really good soundtrack. if you like the 1970s or cars or people or movies you should see it. i bet the dvd looks weird so see and original print in the theatre if you can.
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