Favorite Road Film
It’s hard to pick a favorite. Runners up: Wild At Heart, True Romance, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.
But the best road movie would have to be Natural Born Killers. The movie speaks to me as a journalist, in loathing media outlets that sensationalize tragedy. The screenwriter of the flick—Quentin Tarantino—originally had the movie focused on Robert Downey Jr.’s character, rather than focusing on the messed up childhoods that led to the murder rampages of Micky and Mallory. But the duo—a modern day Bonnie and Clyde—showed America before its time its everlasting empathy for the underdog that we aren’t, but somehow can still relate to. The film evoked the final furious straw of the Columbine killers and several shootings of the like, and is a cult hit all-around.
Honorable mention: Crossroads, Britney Spears’ fictionalized coming of age. The movie is great only for its novelty, where grains of truth are strained to make palatable for the masses. The real vehicle of the film is not the sports car hunky Ben drives, but Britney Spears, on a road trip where serious life issues—rape, marriage, identity issues, and family dysfunctions—are discussed in a manner so fluffy and fictionalized that the attempt immediately loses merit, and succeeds only on camp value.