Highway 61 plays like a road movie as directed by Jim Jarmusch. It has a loose, episodic and amiable plot that covers a good deal of ground – within its running time it manages to be a rebel movie of sorts and a romance, a road movie that consciously trips through rock‘n’roll mythology, and also an unusual and appealing fantasy. Being a Canadian film, it holds an outsider’s view of the USA – it derives a visual poetry from the desolate emptiness of the American backroad countryside. However, what drives the film is its eccentric sense of humour. It comes filled with a series of wonderfully odd cameos and set-pieces – the hunt around a rock star’s mansion with handguns to catch chickens for dinner; Don McKellar’s attempt to shave the leader of a gay biker gang; Art Bergmann’s appearance as a rock star who has taken too many drugs who in the middle of dinner announces, ”Let’s have sex. You can join in too, Pokey – I’m bisexual”; a cameo from Dead Kennedys’ lead singer Jello Biafra in an hilarious caricature of a US border guard; or some of the wonderfully nonchalant exchanges between Don McKellar and Valerie Buhagiar – “Do you want to have sex?” “No thanks, I’m alright.”

All the lead characters give appealing performances, particularly Emil Pastko’s suave Devil. Indeed, he is the most winning character in the film, especially in some of the scenes like where he wins every single round at a church bingo game; or when he appears to the young Watson girl and tells her future – “You’re not going to be a star – you’re going to be ugly, fat and you’re going to spend your life working as a checkout cashier.” The character Emil Pastko plays is treated ambiguously – it is also possible to interpret him as merely being a deluded lunatic. However, his exploits are not particularly well tied to the plot in terms of motivation – the film does not make it clear, for instance, why he has to reclaim the body. Surely the Devil collects sold souls rather than bodies? What does chill one though is when he gives a list of what many of his victims sold their souls for – cans of beer, tickets to rock concerts – and how pathetic a vision of people’s lives it momentarily offers.
 

Trailer here:-

Trailer here:-