Point Blank (1967)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

John Boorman

Writers:

Donald E. Westlake (novel)
Alexander Jacobs (writer) ...

Release Date:

30 August 1967 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Crime | Thriller | Drama

Tagline:

There are two kinds of people in his up-tight world: his victims and his women. And sometimes you can't tell them apart.

Plot:

Later remade as PAYBACK, POINT BLANK follows an angry Lee Marvin through Angie Dickinson and most of California to get to John Vernon...

Plot Keywords:

Vengeance | Betrayal | Neo Noir | Organized Crime | Money

Cast

Lee Marvin	...	Walker
Angie Dickinson	...	Chris
Keenan Wynn	...	Yost
Carroll O'Connor	...	Brewster
Lloyd Bochner	...	Frederick Carter
Michael Strong	...	Stegman
John Vernon	...	Mal Reese
Sharon Acker	...	Lynne
James Sikking	...	Hired Gun
Sandra Warner	...	Waitress
Roberta Haynes	...	Mrs. Carter
Kathleen Freeman	...	First Citizen
Victor Creatore	...	Carter's Man
Lawrence Hauben	...	Car Salesman
Susan Holloway	...	Girl Customer

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Germany:16 (re-rating) | West Germany:18 (original rating) | Australia:M | Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 (cut) | Norway:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 (re-rating) (1998) | UK:18 (video rating) (1993) | UK:X (original rating) | USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay, California, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

When Walker, in Chris' company, switches on the TV at Brewster's house, the music you hear is the overture to Richard Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg"

Quotes:

Chris: What's my last name?
Walker: What's my first name?

Movie Connections:

Featured in Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Soundtrack:

Mighty Good Times

Alienation at its best

I first saw this movie when I was in college in the Seventies. I viewed the film again in 2001. The power of the film was the same on my senses. Several reasons come up: British Director John Boorman was at his best trying to outdo Don Siegel's The Killers (1967)-which also stars Marvin and Dickinson in somewhat similar roles. I will really be surprised if Boorman denies that he was not influenced by the Siegel movie.

Why did Point Blank make an impact on me? Was it Lee Marvin's raw machismo? No. It was Boorman, who gave cinema a brilliant essay on alienation. When Dickinson's Chris asks Marvin's Walker 'What's my last name?' after a bout of sex and gets a repartee 'What's my first name?' you can argue the alienation is embedded in the dialog. But Boorman's cinema includes the loud footsteps of a determined Walker on the soundtrack, somewhat like Godard in Alpahaville, contrasting bright wide open spaces for the exchange of money that goes according to plan and closed dimly lit confines of Alcatraz for those that go wrong. There is laconic humor without laughter, pumping bullets into an empty bed, guards who narrowly miss Marvin going up the lift, the car salesman's interest in an attractive customer than in his job, the sharpshooter's smug satisfaction not realizing that he has got the wrong man…The list is endless.

The camera-work of Philip Lathrop is inventive, but was it Lathrop or Boorman that made the visual appeal of the Panavision format of this film come alive?

Viewing the film in 2001, several points emerge. $93,000 was important to Walker, nothing more nothing less. But was it money he was after or was it the value of an agreement among thieves? The open ended finale runs parallel to the end of an Arthur Penn film (also on alienation)called "Night Moves" made some 10 years later. What surprises me is how a good movie like Point Blank never won an award or even an Oscar nomination.