Kind of similar to EASY RIDER

i thought the same thing

Easy Rider is far more emotive and intriguing as is Two-Lane Blacktop. Vanishing Point left me with a dreadful empty feeling in the end.

If you all liked Easy Rider,VP and Two-Lane Blacktop, check out Electra Glide in Blue ,if you havent seen it yet.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070022/

I generally concur with that assessment. Both were deeply evocative of the era, released a scant two years apart.. I'd include 'BULLITT' in that mix as well.

Both are renegade-classics and visual treats. Vanishing point has more gas in the tank.

I definitely won't deny the connections between the two films, and I imagine in the conceptual stage (or from the point of view whoever financed it) Vanishing Point was made as an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Easy Rider (as were so many other movies in the years following Easy Rider, which was a massive and unexpected financial success).

But, watching them both today, I'm struck by how conservative in a strange way Easy Rider looks. Speaking cynically, I feel the reason Easy Rider was so successful was that it packaged "rebellion" and the "counter-culture" in such a way that it required little commitment or self-awareness by its viewers and appealed to the wealthy pseudo-nonconformist "hippies" more than anyone actually suffering from a repressive society or interested in real social change. Imagine it- the film tells kids they don't have any responsibility to society, you can just "drop out" and do drugs and ride your expensive motorcycle.

Vanishing Point, while superficially similar (drugs, expensive car, open ended journey), admirably resists romanticization of its main character. I think it's a natural tendency to think otherwise, but if you think about the film seriously, Kowalski is just a cipher upon which other people project what they want to project. He's a man that we see people get emotionally invested in (Super Soul) or confused by (the bystanders), or as a nail to be hammered (the police). He's not a lazy John Wayne-type like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, he's a man whose quest is just too abstract to nail down (unlike the prosaic desires of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, who seem to mostly just want to get high and chill out). In a way, you can see Kowalski's journey as the failed project of social upheaval of the 60s (just as many people see Easy Rider) but not in a way that affirms its worst reactionary and conservative tendencies (such as Easy Rider's deplorable treatment of women). Vanishing Point gives us 60s style rebellion in a slippery, self-effacing manner, rather than the inclusive, selfish rebellion of the Easy Riders, and it's all the more fascinating for it.

And, I agree, this would make a good double feature. Putting these two films next to each other would highlight both the resonances and divergences between them, and would make for a good discussion.

They're both road trip movies, they both had 4 wheels. Kowalski was a talented driver, military man and cop. The experiences of the characters are nothing alike. You watch any movie from that period and you would probably say this is like Easy Rider. If you watched Two Lane Blacktop which was in 1971, also a road trip, had 4 wheels :P, you would say he this reminds me of easy rider. It's like if you watch Inception and you say this is like the Matrix. The two movies are vastly different from the characters perspective, very different but it reminds you because of the look and feel. I think Easy Rider is pretty weak really. If you wanted to compare something to Easy Rider how about Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. Fonda tried to remake Easy Rider in some abstract way, it too can remind you of it. It's the speeding across the wide open plains that is the reason for such nostalgic longings. A lot of the freedoms people once enjoyed have been eroded away. We live in a very unfree time. We might be safer perhaps but certainly no more free. Since Bush started the war on freedom peoples freedom has gone down very quickly.