USA - Top Ten Road Movies

Road Movie here used in the loose term where there’s lots of road and lots of movie. Most of them are definitely part of the genre, some of them I might be slipping in via my own personal criteria, but their all superb films so that makes it ok.

Very honourable mentions are the flawless Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde, which were themselves inspiration for some of these films on my list. I think I've omitted them mainly because they get enough press, so I'd prefer to include some perhaps less known.

Duel (1971)(PG)
Stephen Spielberg’s directorial debut and the precursor to Jaws. Simple premise plus Spielberg equals lashings of suspenseful entertainment. A man driving across the country in his red Plymouth Valiant falls foul of a dirty great hulking exhaust spewing ugly tanker-truck that develops a dangerous vendetta against him and high speed cat and mouse action results. The truck is the villain as the shark is in his next ever so slightly more famous thriller.

Badlands (1973)(15)
Cissy Spacek plays the young teenager Holly who meets the bad boy Kit (Martin Sheen) and is lead by girlish adoration and naivety on a chilling journey of murder. Stark, haunting and beautifully filmed to capture an America that is real and very frightening.

Raising Arizona (1987)(12)
Is this technically a road movie? I'm not sure but when I think of America, films and roads the first thing that springs to my mind is the image of a chirpy plump baby in a car chair sat in the middle of a dusty highway being born down on by a wild hairy smoking hell’s angel, the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. The Coen Brother’s have taken their especially dark hats off for this comedy and produced one of my favourite of their films (the other being The Hudsucker Proxy), a bit more like My Name is Earl than No Country for Old Men. Ed (Holly Hunter) a Cop and Hi (Nicholas Cage) a criminal fall in love, and bite off more than they can chew when, finding out they can't conceive, they decide to kidnap one of local tycoon Nathan Arizona's quintuplets. They've got so many surely they won't notice one missing?! Unfortunately they do.

The Hitcher (1986)(18)
A trusting and innocent young Jim (C. Thomas Howell), saving some money by delivering a car across the country, picks up the Hitcher (Rutger Hauer) to keep himself awake on the road. Error!!! This man turns out to be a complete psychopath on a murdering mission, doing away with adults and children alike, and to make things even worse he takes a particular shine to young Jim. He doesn't want to kill him, he wants to destroy him mentally bit by bit! Every time you think Jim has surely found his way to safety, it just gets worse. Geat performances and never a dull moment!

Convoy (1978)(15)
By one of my favourite directors Sam Peckinpah, I saw this film as a child and have never forgotten the great Dukes of Hazard type atmosphere, Rubber Duck on the CB and the accompanying country music, as the truckers show a solid protest against the bullying law enforcers by forming a mile long convoy to support their fellow trucker's flight from an unfair charge to the Mexico border. Uplifting and unforgettable, 'you ever seen a duck that couldn't swim?' Other noteworthy films of that type are Smokey and the Bandit and the Canonball Run.

Rain Man (1988)(15)
Archetypal eighties Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman comedy-drama. Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) a young yuppie’s father dies and bequeaths his estate to an unknown autistic savant in a mental institution, who turns out to be his brother Raymond (Hoffman), not that anybody mentioned his existence to him before. Charlie is not impressed; he immediately fetches Raymond from the institution in Ohio to bring him to his attorney in LA to sort out this injustice and get his half of the dues. However Raymond’s condition and fear of flying results in a cross country jaunt, and the comical, emotional journey unfolds. Aside from the fact that it aggravated my fear of flying, it is one of those endlessly watchable classics.

Natural Born Killers (1994)(18)
Oliver Stone’s extremely controversial work portrays Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis) young newly-weds expressing their true love with a cross country killing spree. The media jumping gleefully on their band wagon and the public idolising these free spirited sociopaths. Disturbing but also visually adventurous, with the use of several different techniques interspersed, flashes of dancing shapes and colours, cut-up flashbacks and forwards, animation and blurring of lines between fiction and reality.

Doom Generation (1995)(18)
Part of director Greg Araki's Teenage Apocalypse trilogy, the others being Totally F**ked Up and Nowhere. The main link between these films being the fabulous actor James Duval and his quest for the one true love in a numb sex and drug obsessed society. In this chapter he finds himself playing the character Jordan, with his girlfriend Amy (Rose McGowan). Heading home from a night out they pick up a stranger X (Johnathan Schaech) who accidentally kills a store owner, and the threesome go on the run. A surreal journey full of bizarre inexplicable encounters and sexual scenarios, it gets pretty grim! Very grim indeed!

My Own Private Idaho(1991)(18)
‘I'm a connoisseur of roads. I've been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all…. around…. the world.’
The beautiful River Phoenix is a narcoleptic gay hustler with his friend/colleague Keanu Reeves in this film by director Gus Van Sant. A strange mixture of a story of these two rent boys (based on real people who make cameo appearances), their relationship, different motives for finding themselves in this line of work, and general illicit wanderings. It is also interspersed with a rough modern interpretation of Shakespeares Henry IV and V with some direct quotes, mostly from their bulbous Falstaff-type teacher of errant ways, Bob. It's certainly heavy and complex, open to reams of studied interpretation, but is watchable on a number of different levels.

Vanishing Point (1971)(18)
This is unquestionably my number one American Road Movie. A man named Kowalski, a White 1970 Dodge challenger, a stack loads of speed and an impossible deadline (fifteen hours to get this car from Denver Colorado to San Francisco), and a Dead End. The epic soundtrack is supplied by SuperSoul the blind black dj in a local station who dubs Kowalski "the last American Hero", as he tunes in on the police frequency and proceeds in drawing public attention to the state troopers high speed, cross state pursuit of this speed freak!.But Kowalski barely seems aware of the chaos he's creating, his focus is on his own memories, shown in flashbacks, on some brief encounters along the way, and on the road, and he won't be distracted from his ultimate destination - his vanishing point.

USA Top Ten Trilogy Part II - New York Movies

USA Top Ten Trilogy Part III - Califorinia Movies