Where Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop etherealized the open-road counterculture zeitgeist, Richard Sarafian's cultish speedster is all metaphorical grabbiness. Obligatory portentous opening (hatched-faced cowboys gaping at tractors muscling down main street) checked off, the film introduces taciturn delivery driver Barry Newman, who, already tagged with the tersely ethnic moniker "Kowalski," decides to prove his macho mantle by betting he can steer his Dodge Challenger from Colorado to Frisco in no more than 15 hours. Of course, since blind-yet-all-seeing radio DJ Cleavon Little (unlikely dispensing soul hits in a redneck hellhole) dubs him "the last American hero," every cop along the way is mobilized to put a dent in his trek. The film's initially crisp, almost abstractionist use of road lines and movement unhappily segues into dippy allegory, cramming Newman's Kowalski with outsider cred (disillusionment tripled: Vietnam vet, failed racer, ex-cop) to complement his stubble and scraggly mop. Zipping across the desert floor, he's supposed to be Mr. Anti-Hero, though it's scarcely clear whether his encounters with plucky prospectors, tambourine-rattling faith healers, lisping carjacking homos and naked hippie chicks mark him as soured late-'60s spillage or old-school tough guy befuddled by the shifting landscape of a nation. Either way, his journey is meant to be transcendental, and the rendezvous with the eponymous junction its climax -- a literally vaporizing culmination. Chuck Jones got more out of similar material in his Roadrunner shorts, which also had the considerable edge of being hilarious. Not just more fun, higher artistry as well. With Dean Jagger, Victoria Medlin and Paul Koslo.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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