Lee Marvin stars as the lethal Walker in director John Boorman's stunningly stylized daylight noir, POINT BLANK. Mal Reese (John Vernon), Walker's partner in crime, shoots him and leaves him for dead on desolate Alcatraz Island just after they've pulled off a huge heist. For good measure, Reese also makes off with Walker's perfidious wife, Lynne (Sharon Acker). A couple of years later, while touring Alcatraz, Walker is approached by a man named Yost (Keenan Wynn) who offers to help him get his cut of the take by leading him to Reese and Lynne in exchange for information about the mysterious organization that now includes the thief's ex-partner. Walker agrees. He first runs down Lynne in L.A. and says hello by burying a few rounds in her bed but leaves her unharmed. Long ago abandoned by Reese, she's disintegrating emotionally and attempts to babble an explanation of her actions to the indifferent Walker. With the help of Lynne's sister, Chris (Angie Dickinson), Walker gains access to Reese's seemingly impregnable penthouse apartment, and the former partners' reunion is less than blissful. One of the best thrillers of the 1960s, the film's deadpan amorality and fragmented Resnais-influenced narrative, echoed in the startling camera angles and obliquely gorgeous anamorphic compositions of high-testosterone specialist Philip Lathrop (THE CINCINNATI KID), make clear why POINT BLANK has slowly become one of the most influential noirs.
A man shot and left for dead by his unfaithful wife and her mobster boyfriend exacts his revenge on them a few years later in this thriller directed by John Boorman.
Theatrical release: August 30, 1967.
Shot on locations on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, and in Los Angeles, California.
Director John Boorman and actor Lee Marvin also worked together on HELL IN THE PACIFIC the following year.
Boorman claims that on a day when, as a relatively inexperienced director, he reached the set with no idea how to shoot a given scene, Marvin noticed his confusion and quietly told him to take his time setting up the shot. He then feigned hungover incompetence, stopping the shoot until he saw that the director had a handle on the set-up, whereupon he returned to his sobriety, and Boorman proceeded to shoot.
DVD Features:
Region 1
Keep Case
Widescreen 2.40
Audio:
Mono 1.0 English
Mono 1.0 French
Additional Release Material:
Featurette: Vintage Featurettes The Rock Part 1 and The Rock Part 2
Audio Commentary: Directors John Boorman and Steven Soderbergh
Distributor Notes: They double-crossed Walker, took his $93,000 cut of the heist and left him for dead, but they didn't finish the job. Big mistake. He - someday, somehow - is going to finish them. Lee Marvin is in full antihero mode as remorseless Walker, talking the talk and walking the walk in John Boorman's (Deliverance) edgy neo-noir classic filled with imaginative New Wave style, blunt dialogue and Walker's relentless quest that, one by one, smashes into the corporate pecking order of a crime group called the Organization. Angie Dickinson plays the accomplice who uses her seductive wiles to ensnare one of Walker's prey. "I want my 93 grand," Walker growls at him. Throughout, the payoff to that demand is action that "hits like a fat slug from the .38 Lee Marvin uses as an extension of his fist" (Newsweek).
Source: Warner Home Video
Cinematographer
Philip H. Lathrop: American Director of Photography
Writer
Alexander Jacobs: Screenwriter
Art Director
George W. Davis: Art Director
Review 1:
"...[An] enigmatic and dreamlike work....Boorman makes brilliant use of his LA locations, filling the screen with starling, hallucinatory images..." -- 5 out of 5 Stars
Source: Total Film
p.106 06/01/2000
Review 2:
"...A cult film....In a class with BONNIE AND CLYDE..." -- 3 1/2 out of 4 stars
Source: USA Today
p.3D 02/12/1993
Review 3:
"[A] tightly coiled noir."
Source: Entertainment Weekly
p.53-56 07/08/2005
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