Metacritic reviews

This minimalist masterpiece is one of the greatest American films to come out of the 1970’s.

Certainly not an average car chase movie, Two-Lane Blacktop is perhaps director Monte Hellman's finest film.

Hellman gives viewers plenty of time to study every detail, dwelling less on action than on quiet, small-town vistas, rundown diners, and forgotten stretches of Route 66.

An excellent combination of in-depth contemporary story-telling and personality casting.

It's absolutely riveting.

The movie starts off as a narrative but gradually grows into something much more abstract—it's unsettling but also beautiful.

Two-Lane Blacktop is a far from perfect film (those metaphors keep blocking the road), but it has been directed, acted, photographed and scored (underscored, happily) with the restraint and control of an aware, mature filmmaker.

In Hellman’s film, Taylor and Wilson exert a negative charisma: their presence is both powerful and blank, deeply expressive in its neutrality. They offer one of the few original post-sixties reconfigurations of the movie star. Their manner is a perfect match for the story, and for the mythic, symbolic landscape in which it’s set.

What I liked about Two-Lane Blacktop was the sense of life that occasionally sneaked through, particularly in the character of G.T.O. (Warren Oates).

America exploded in the ’60s; Two-Lane Blacktop is the post-apocalyptic road trip.