Le point de non-retour

In the wake of his Cannes Best Director award for The General, Boorman's stunning debut has been released with a new print. Unrelentingly downbeat, this stylish crime thriller made in 1967 seems to have fuelled virtually Elmore Leonard novel.

Steely, panther-like hitman Walker (marvellous Marvin) has been fitted up, shot at and had $93,0000 stolen from him all because of ex-pal Mal Reese (John Vernon). A tad upset he decides to resurrects himself, with the help of the shadowy Yost (Keenan Wynn) for revenge and his payment.

Boorman greets us with a five-minute sequence that is crammed with curious camera angles, fractured time-lines and carefully constructed compositions. We're bombarded by a montage of piercingly violent images blended together with fragments of a failed heist on Alcatraz Island and a pair of slugs ripping into Walker's body. We're only privy to these flash snippets of information, but they're still enough to help us empathise with Marvin's masterly obsessive.

A year or two later Walker is on a tourist boat trip to Alcatraz, being propositioned by Yost. The creepy Yost knows where Mal and his Walker ex-wife Lynne (Sharon Acker) are and is willing to reveal this to him, just as long as he receives some information on a shadowy body called "The Organisation". Walker simply nods. His dialogue is minimal, his obsession is reflected through his curt questions, his sudden movements, his eyes and the flashbacks that haunt him.

When he catches up with his cheating ex-wife he allows her to talk uninterrupted in a desperate, forlorn monotone - "He's gone. Cold. Moved out," she says. Walker barely takes it in, all that motivates him is the thought, "Somebody's gotta to pay."

While others flounder, Marvin appears impenetrable like one of Sergio Leone's cowboys. Only Clint Eastwood never conveyed this much emotion in his movements.

Boorman's seminal film preceded the spate of fabulous paranoia flicks that enriched 70s American cinema – The Conversation, The Parallax View, All The President's Men – where a shadowy "Organisation" pulls the nation's strings. Tarantino has since appropriated this organisation theme on a small-time level, plagarising the black suits and the unwavering professionalism of the violence. De Niro's ex-con in Jackie Brown is based on Marvin's Walker, as are countless other performances.

Even Angie Dickinson, playing Lynne's sister Chris, leaves him cold. In a remarkable scene she resorts to repeatedly slamming Walker's immovable slab of a chest. He remains impregnable, emotionally void. She keeps on punching until she finally collapses on the floor in a heap. They finally make love, only for the isolation, the loss of identity, to continue. Is he an avenging angel? Is he there at all?

"Hey, what's my last name?" asks a post-coital Chris. "What's my first name?" he deadpans, answering a question with another question. Always seeking answers, never providing them. No love left in him, only a need for payment.

Point Blank contains inspiring visuals, a haunting soundtrack and some stunning acting. Fabulous, groundbreaking cinema. --Ben Walsh

Point Blank(1967) is a early feature by John Boorman who would go on to direct Deliverance(1972), Excalibur(1981), and The General(1998). It is an excellent noir about a man who's betrayed and left for dead who goes after the outfit that owes him money. Point Blank is a tightly constructed thriller with brillient montage and mise-en-scene. The film does a good job at showing the phychodelic colors of late 1960's San Fransico. Lee Marvin in this movie shows why he is one of the best Hollywood tough guys of all time. It is much better than the remake Payback(1999) because of Lee Marvin's presence and the masterful editing and camera work of the film.

Tough and brutal, that best describes Boorman's excellent direction. Lee Marvin is perfect as a man who is out for revenge. The story is quite raw, it features flashbacks which haunt the character. The ending sums up the character, but you'll need to see it to find out for yourself. The supporting cast is very good, but this Marvin's baby and he is terrific.

Boorman makes full use of the widescreen frame. Watching in full frame ruins the entire picture. You have only truly seen Point Blank if you've viewed in widescreen.

Point Blank is one of those lost gems from the 1960's. It got buried because it was released around the same time as Bonnie and Clyde. This film combines all the great elements of the American action film with flourishes of European art house cinema. John Boorman's direction is excellent, and not enough can be said about Lee Marvin's performance. This is without question one of Lee's best tough guy performances. I don't understand how the previous reviewer can say this film seems "dated" and "funny for all the wrong reasons". It is as fresh and interesting as it was back at the time of its release. Those looking for it on DVD may want to know that the widescreen format version appears on TCM occasionally. You may want to pop in a tape the next time it is on until the DVD finally comes out.

... and maybe that's ultimately why it failed at the box office in 1967. People generally got only one shot at the apple as far as viewing went before years passed and it got on TV. Now that you have continuous access to a film, whether via streaming or DVD, you can do back to back viewings and catch everything.

1967 was a good year for Lee Marvin at MGM, where he made two movies for the studio that have ended up in the 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, this one and The Dirty Dozen. John Boorman does some stylistically interesting things, but it's a bit too much, the flourishes calling too much attention to themselves and distracting from the story. He had become much more masterful at letting the visuals contribute to the advance of the story by the time he made Deliverance and Excalibur, IMO. These flashbacks Marvin/Walker kept having to events that had previously occurred in the movie - and in a movie that clocks in at under 95 minutes, at that - just seemed like overkill to me.

I found the plot terribly confusing the first time around. The crooks were hiding out in Alcatraz, where regular tours are conducted? Heck, Marvin himself is shown on such a tour very early in the film. I had no concept of what Marvin's life was supposed to have been before the events of the movie. In the flashback where he met his wife, he appears to be a dockworker straight out of On the Waterfront. The bit where the future marrieds circle each other, locked in eye contact was kinda sexy, but the presence of all of Marvin's coworkers standing one inch away from them was weird. I also didn't understand the connection between Walker and Reese or what this incredibly crowded party was where they reunited or the other barroom scene where Reese knocks Walker to the floor and climbs on top of him to tell him how badly he needs money. These scenes didn't make sense to me at all, but they didn't ruin my overall enjoyment of the movie.

I liked Carol O'Connor as the Nicest Guy in the Mob. Keenan Wynn's character I didn't get. He somehow finds Walker when no one else knows he's alive and recruits him in pursuing mutual interests. I thought for the whole movie until the final scene that he was some kind of law enforcement - a Fed, maybe. The ending is also vague, I suppose deliberately so. Wynn tells the Hired Gun to leave the bag with the money, so I guess Walker gets the money? Though we don't see it explicitly.

Anyway, I just love the 60s look - the architecture, the cars, the hairstyles, the clothes. I loved the hamburger joint where Marvin and Dickinson ate with the giant windows. I loved her pad with the balcony that looked down on the living area. I loved O'Connor's sprawling retreat. I loved the technology! I guess mob millionaires had remote controls for their TVs in 1967 (Well, Jack Lemmon had one in The Apartment way back in 1960, and he was at best a middle-class schlub). Oh, yeah, I also dug O'Connor's primitive speaker phone, where he put the receiver in some kind of device so you suddenly had speaker phone.

The thing I missed the most? The screenplay, in its attempt to be ultra-cool, neglects to provide wronged gangster Lee Marvin with the one ingredient that is indispensable to the sort villainous hero he specialized in, namely humor. This is one of the few Lee Marvin films that contains not one memorable zinger, delivered in that patented, guttural drawl of his. It's worth a look, but I can see why 1967 audiences didn't take to it, with only one viewing to "get it".