Five Easy Pieces

“He rode the fast lane on the road to nowhere.”

Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) works the oil rigs and spends his nights drinking, and he drifts through both with the same sullen shrug. Then a talk with his sister Partita (Lois Smith) pulls him toward the family home in Washington, where his father is dying, and Rayette (Karen Black), his girlfriend, comes along. Bob Rafelson watches Robert lean away from the tenderness she offers him, and the two of them stay stuck in the car together.