Wow! Such a good movie.

Overrated and overhyped

Absolutely Fantastic

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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.

John Boorman's brilliant hallucinatory revenge film defies genre traditions and ends up becoming something wholly new never seen on film before or since. Lee Marvin plays the laconic Walker (named Parker in the Richard Stark/Donald Westlake books), a man double crossed and left for dead by his wife and best friend. He reemerges years later and his friend has now climbed the crime syndicate ranks, so Marvin starts at the bottom and works his way up the syndicate ranks, single handedly taking out the entire syndicate hierarchy. The script is efficient and the film features a strong cast, led by an almost completely silent Marvin, which includes Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O'Connor, Michael Strong, and John Vernon. With this script and cast, this would have been enough for a solid crime film in the hands of most any director. Even a journeyman like Gordon Douglas or Phil Karlson could have made a good film, but it's Boorman's visual and editing style that make this film something truly unique and a film classic. The closest I can think to compare this film to would be proto-French New Wave director Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Samouraï" (released the same year) or possibly moments in a handful of Brian De Palma films. There are so many moments in the film that burn their way into the viewers brain, such as Walker determined march down a long hallways with the only sound being his footsteps intercut with him tracking down his first target, or Walker silently sitting on the couch next to his ex-wife as she tells why she betrayed him, or the fight sequence in a nightclub with swirls of psychedelic colors exploding across the face of Marvin to 1960s youth music, to the film's ending as the audience watch Walker's half shadowed face completely slip into darkness. The film is a visual feast and is the strongest element of the film's many strong points. Lee Marvin's performance as well demands recognition. Marvin was always an underrated actor, but you truly cannot take your eyes off of him in this film as he single mindedly works his way through the LA crime syndicate repeating over and over, like a mantra, "I want me $83,000 dollars" "Point Blank" is a true American film classic (by a British director) that must be seen by all cinephiles. And look fast for Sid Haig as a mob security guard.

... 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".

Lee Marvin stars in this stylish neo-noir, Point Blank, with a European sensibility, directed by John Boorman. The film also stars Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn, John Vernon, Lloyd Bochner, Carroll O'Connor, and Sharon Acker. This movie and Payback are based on the same book, "Hunter." Mal Reese (John Vernon) needs money to pay organized crime bosses and talks his friend Walker (Marvin) to help him steal it. However, the money, if split, isn't enough for him to make his payment. Reese steals it all and shoots Walker, believing that he killed him.Walker isn't dead, and he wants his money. We don't know how much time has passed, but it seems like it's at least a couple of years. His wife (Acker) cheated on him with Mal after Walker was shot, so he visits her. But she and Mal are no longer together.He visits Chris (Dickinson), his wife's sister, and then finally reaches Reese. Reese isn't the last stop on the food chain, though. In order to get his money, Walker has to go up the line of gangsters. He's good with a gun and plenty sick of waiting.This is a film without a ton of dialogue and with a very internal performance by Lee Marvin. The editing is especially crisp - we get very tiny flashbacks, and in the end, we wonder if this was a dream he has while in prison or if it all really happened.The casting is unusual as it is populated with people who worked primarily in television - Vernon and Bochner were practically mainstays on shows like Mission: Impossible, Sharon Acker was a TV actress, and Carroll O'Connor's great fame came in television.There is a starkness about this film, in an urban setting of cement lacking in much personality. Through it all, there's Marvin, quietly racking up the body count. In Payback, Mel Gibson is much more overt, and the violence is stronger.This isn't made like other films, and I have to think, even though it came out at the same time as Bonnie & Clyde, that it had some influence.