Point Blank

UK Release Date. 21 December 1967
Certification. X
Running Time. 1 hour 32 mins
Director. John Boorman
Cast. Sharon Acker, Angie Dickinson, Lee Marvin, Carroll O'Connor, John Vernon, Keenan Wynn.
Rating. 67%

Review.

The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the classic period for film noir; consider the likes of The Maltese Falcon, Shadow Of A Doubt, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Third Man and Sunset Boulevard. But in the early 1960s, the 20-year love affair with film noir finally waned. The cynical themes and morally ambiguous characters drifted away from the Hollywood mainstream, aligned with a time when Kodak introduced single-strip Eastman Color film, which made colour production easier and, importantly, more economical, and driven by competition from colour television, 1967 was the first year in which more colour feature-length films were released than black-and-white ones. By the 1970s, the genre returned - reinvented, rebranded and modernised as neo-noir - by directors such as Alan J. Pakula (Klute), Peter Yates (The Friends Of Eddie Coyle), Robert Altman (The Long Goodbye) and Roman Polanski (Chinatown).

In the intervening decade, a handful of films touched on familiar noir themes, providing a bridge between the old and new. Films like Cape Fear, The Killers, In Cold Blood, In The Heat Of The Night, and John Boorman’s Point Blank seem at times like the tail end of classic noir, at others like the first sign of something fresh and bold.

Grim, violent, transfixingly sour and strange, Boorman's Point Blank is an embryonic neo-noir crime drama, complete with stark, stylised visuals and a fragmented narrative.

The film is based on the works of the prolific mystery writer Donald E. Westlake, who in 1962, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, published the first in a series of crime novels featuring a low-level criminal [known only as Parker, but re-named Walker in Point Blank].

Betrayed, shot, and left for dead, Walker (Lee Marvin), sets out to exact revenge against his one-time accomplice, Mal Reese (John Vernon) and the nefarious, shadowy crime syndicate simply referred to as 'The Organisation.' Lee Marvin is perfectly cast as the lone gunman fuelled by revenge - a throwback to the western anti-hero. At the peak of his career (following on from Cat Ballou, The Professionals and, a few months before Point Blank, The Dirty Dozen), this is the quintessential Lee Marvin performance. With pared-down dialogue, Marvin plays Walker as an incarnation of single-minded intent. 

The single-mindedness of Boorman’s direction, mimicking that of its relentless, silent, implosive main character, is also reflected in the uninterrupted, clinical lines of precise and often utterly barren locations. Amidst the slick, asphalt-covered streets of late-1960s Los Angeles, the dominant hues are industrial shades of avocado, orange, and khaki; this is a Los Angeles baked dry of beauty, and Boorman, shooting in colour, keeps the palette impressively coherent and resolutely unattractive. Complementing Boorman’s deliberate visual style is some truly magnificent editing (by Editor, Henry Berman), which creates some truly memorable sequences.

Point Blank is a brilliant array of contradictions. It’s bleak, yet brutal. Intimate, yet impersonal. Simple, yet complex. Boorman’s second feature-length film would have been an audacious venture from a veteran filmmaker; from a novice, it was remarkable. The film is a prime example of cinema that has improved over time - a revenge thriller so hard-boiled and pared-back as to be almost insolently cool.