Unexpectedly influential – on Richard C. Sarafian’s “Vanishing Point” (1971)

Car chases!!

As I sat down to watch an alleged minor cult classic of the car chase genre, the last thing on my mind was an expectation that I was about to discover the single biggest visual influence on Pixar’s “Cars.”

All the imagery is here, from impossibly straight roads that lead the eye from the foreground all the way up to the horizon; racing cars rolling awkwardly over dry desert brush; a huge NASCAR pile-up, to the clincher — a sleepy forgotten Midwestern town not knowing quite how to react when a supercar comes roaring into their lives at full speed.

The film? It’s good while it’s a chase. Once it gets trippy and hippy, it loses a bit for me. By the time Charlotte Rampling hits the screen, the momentum is lost. Ballsy ending.

(I think it’s also a big influence on “Midnight Run,” too. But for me the visual link to “Cars” was far more striking)

3/5 stars.