Maybe Payne's best film. Love the road movie aspect of it (recurring in most of his films), which is an allegory for present-day America: full of symbols and places to see and visit, yet desolate and detached. Painfully unheroic. And yet existentialist in a way that most Europeans won't understand nor have to experience. Arguably Jack Nicholson's best role. If there’s a Top 10 of must-see Americana in movies, I would count this one in.