Hard-bitten Gil (well played with resolute meanness by Robert Drivas) and his more nice'n'naive younger partner Hank (a fine and likable performance by Barry Bostwick) are a couple of gypsy truckers struggling to make a living on their own. The severity of their grave situation gets compounded after they meet and pick up scrappy lizard prostitute Janice (a bracing and bravura portrayal by Regina Baff). Director Joseph Strick presents a grim and unflinching, yet still vivid and fascinating exploration of the seamy underbelly of a tough and cruel blue collar American milieu: The stunning use of ugly and unappealing locations (seedy motels, foul junkyards, grubby parking lots, trashy diners, and so on), the starkly downbeat narrative, the unsparingly bleak and harsh tone, a startling array of scuzzy secondary characters, the strong sense of gritty realism, and the uncompromisingly depressing bummer ending all pack a savagely potent kick to the gut. Judith Rascoe's biting and corrosive script offers a trenchant commentary on the tremendous difficulty of achieving true autonomy in a culture that celebrates independence (this is an intrinsic contradiction of the always enticing, but constantly elusive American Dream), with a spot-on central statement on how almost everyone way or another winds up basically becoming a part of someone else's business and how the fight to attain absolute freedom tends to be a daunting uphill battle all the way. The three leads all do sterling work, with Baff rating as the definite stand-out as an angry, unhinged, and abused highway hooker who's bad side you don't wish to bring out. Popping up in neat small roles are Gary Goodrow as a slimy broker, Martin Kove as a jerky weigh station cop, and Joe Pantoliano as a mugger. Stanley Myers' bluesy country score does the get-down groovy trick. Don Lenzer's rough no-frills cinematography further enhances the overall grungy verisimilitude. One of the most shamefully neglected and underrated indie drama sleepers from the 70's.
Review of Road Movie
