chaswe-28402 Did it ? I don't think it did. I might have found out if I'd listened to the director's commentary, with Soderbergh, but I couldn't be bothered. Maybe I'll take it in at some future time. Otherwise it was quite interesting, but terminally puzzling. It didn't hang together very well. More or less a permanent clash of personalities. Difficult to know why they were so cool with each other. Why did Angie try to batter Lee so furiously, with no effect ? Frankly, I needed more clarity. What exactly was it about ? Did Marvin collect his money ? Did he wind up as a part-owner boss of the mob ? Most of the rest of the cast were dead by the end. Similar to Bacon's opinion about his own paintings. Meaningless, unless you find meaning in them. One critic thinks that Marvin was actually dead throughout the entire movie.

lasttimeisaw A betrayed, taciturn loner clinically exacts his revenge in John Boorman's POINT BLANK, which stylishly epitomizes the one-man-against-an-evil-organization trope, starring Lee Marvin as the first-name-eluded Walker, one of his most eminent characters that taps into the time-honored appeal of wounded masculinity.Marvin's star charisma is unequivocally put into great use here with a hard-boiled patina and an aloof containment of cynicism, double-crossed by his best friend Mal Reese (Vernon), who also takes away his wife Lynne (Acker), Walker's ascendancy as a hell-bent one-track mind strips him of all other earthly trappings (emotion included) but his comparatively petty pecuniary restitution, even the proactive approaching of Lynne's sultry sister Chris (Dickinson, vamped up with appreciable depth into a seductress' seesawing psyche) can hardly stir his presence of mind, paired with his astute lucidity when grappling with his sinister but clueless antagonists (crammed with memorable supporting turns like a lecherous sleaze in the form of John Vernon, or a suave but scheming Lloyd Bochner, eventually hoisted by his own petard) in bottom-up expediency, his final wordless fading into the darkness is a trenchant retort to a world suffused with vice and avarice, sardonically, Walker never liquidates anyone with his own hands. Saliently, Boorman visualizes an unorthodox editing modus operandi to spice up the action, from the treacherous prologue, to its measured ambush with the organization's supremo, aided by editor Henry Berman's studious dexterity, it defies audience's wont viewing habit by strewing the plot with fleeting flashback that impinges on the film's coherence but whips up a quaint tension that strangely buttresses its thinly panned-out story and its Neo-noir mores. As cool as a cucumber, POINT BLANK pointedly retains its epoch-reflecting atmospherics and vigorous mode, a sound testimony of Boorman's stupendous versatility and Marvin's indelible screen incarnation that would emanate huge impact on its many a cinematic progeny, a flinty enforcer whom nothing can hold back.

mm-39 Point Blank is the movie Playback's predecessor. Porter for Walker! Gibson for Marvin! The premise of the story is exact. Marvin gets robbed, left for dead and wants his money back. The Porter/Walker characters are excellent, as harden robbers who are all so professional. The mechanics of the both stories are exciting to watch. Regrettably Point Blank has lulls. Angie Dickinson's character slows and or drags the story. The 60's flashbacks direction kills the tempo. Payback has better double cross side stories. The Chinese mob, and dirty cops side stories brought Payback to a higher level than Point Blank's side story. John Vernon aka Mal Reese character is good, but the Gregg Henry, Val Resnick, character put slime to a new art form. Point Blank had a statement ending and come across dull!

jadavix John Boorman's "Point Blank" is a classic crime film.It features Lee Marvin in a typically gripping turn as a criminal hell- bent on revenge, Angie Dickinson also perfectly cast as a femme fatale, and the first ever performance from John Vernon as a slippery turncoat criminal. Later, we are treated to Carroll O'Connor as a corporate fat cat whose business is crime. Those with sharp eyes will even spot Sid Haig as, what else, a henchman. Indeed, the movie is perfectly cast.It is also wonderfully shot and directed by Boorman. The hallmarks of New Hollywood in its nascent stage are here, and not just in the usual antiheroic main characters and pedestrian attitude to sex and violence. The movie also features startling directorial touches such as a set piece in a nightclub with a James Brown-esque singer, shouting "Ow!" onstage, the repeated sound drowning out the moans and groans of thugs battered backstage, who have a more typical reason to say "ow". Both parties are in turn drowned out, this time by blood-curdling screams, when a dancer discovers the broken bodies.The movie doesn't just show crime. It comments on it with real cleverness. Scenes like the above showcase the closeness of violence to other forms of expression. In another scene, Marvin's mononymous Walker talks to "Chris", his sister and law, also mononymous. Does he "want" you, Walker asks, hatching a plan to ensnare the turncoat played by John Vernon. He does. "I want *him*," Walker replies, and there is no homosexual subtext implied. The term "want" moved from the sexual to the violent in the space of a few breaths.You have to forgive the laughably unrealistic scene in which Vernon falls to his death on the limitations of film in 1967. The film is so well shot, using bright colours as well as it uses shadow, that you know this was the best they could have done. I love the final shot, the camera moving out to show Alcatraz, where the action began, the "hero" himself double-crossed and made to chase his tail, hardly getting anywhere from the movies ignominious beginning. And I loved the final twist.Point Blank is a classic.