Point Blank Streaming
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Point Blank Streaming.
Movie Title: Point Blank Point Blank is available for streaming or downloading. |
Leave it to John Boorman to combine the stylized storytelling of French Recent Wave with American film noir in “Point Blank”. This titillating, sharp movie was made in 1967 when the film world was in the embrace of experimental film. Although it’s quite different from “Blow Up”, the storytelling style is impartial as stylized and current. Lee Marvin plays Walker a criminal cheated out of $93,000 from a robbery of a mob like syndicate on Alcatraz by his best friend Reese(John Vernon) . Participating in the heist/murder is Walker’s young wife who has been having an affair with Reese. After getting the money, Reese shoots his friend, takes his wife and leaves him for boring on Alcatraz.
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With the assist of a mysterious benefactor (Keenan Wynn), Walker tracks down Reese exacting revenge in pursuit for what he’s owed. When his wife commits suicide, Walker seeks out her sister Chris (Angie Dickinson) in hope of luring Reese out of hiding. From there this convoluted mystery spins more threads than director John Boorman knows what to do with but, surprisingly, he keeps the legend from getting too tangled up.
Boorman and director Steven Soderbergh (“Ocean’s 11″, “Solaris”, “Sex Lies and Videotape”) provide a curious commentary track on the making of the movie. Boorman recalls that originally Lee Marvin wanted Peggy Lee for the role that Dickinson plays. While he went with Boorman’s decision of Dickinson he wasn’t very nice to his co-star which worked particularly during the scene where Dickinson starts hitting Marvin. Dickinson hit Marvin so hard he had bruises the next day but the actor stoically took the hits and the camera kept rolling. Boorman also discusses the stylized near he uses in shooting the film including a sequence in Walker’s deceased wife’s apartment that where the body disappears in an almost dream like sequence, the furniture disappears and Marvin’s clothes change. The studio was so concerned when it saw the first nick of this sequence it hired a psychologist to approach talk to the director.
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Featuring a pleasing transfer from Warner Home Video and a nearly perfect mark modern print of the film, “Point Blank” looks appealing with sparkling colors. The mono soundtrack with some of its modern sound effects (the sound of Walker’s feet providing a percussive element to one sequence in particularly) also sounds remarkably distinct. There’s also a two fraction promo featurette “The Rock” which focuses on the shooting of the movie on Alcatraz (it was the first movie shot there since the prison closed in 1963 and had been turned into a plot park) . Using San Francisco, Santa Monica and Los Angeles as a backdrop, the film features heavenly cinematography. If Don Siegel had watched the French Recent Wave prior to making some of his noir laced thrillers, this is what it might have looked like.
Remade with Mel Gibson as a more old looking thriller called “Payback”, “Point Blank” features Marvin in one of his most stoic, much and grim performances. His character of Walker leaves a scamper of lifeless bodies without remorse or regret in pursuit of what is rightfully his. Unlike a lot of films that incorporated the surreal touch of the French Unique Wave (such as Truffaut’s “Shoot the Piano Player” or any of Goddard’s films), “Point Blank” has stale remarkably well with Boorman’s stylized exercise of sets, camera region ups, flasbacks, etc. suggesting what’s really going on inside of Walker’s head. There’s also a suggestion that maybe Walker didn’t survive (particularly during the last sequence) and that “Point Blank” represents the dying delusion of a man thirsting for revenge. A agreeable film filled with many, many levels, this classic thriller does not have a straight forward epic so if you’re expecting a realistic film noir or memoir, you should behold elsewhere.
This review is for the Warner Brothers DVD released in 2005.
`Point Blank’ starts out in an abandoned Alcatraz Prison circa 1967 where Walker (Lee Marvin), his wife, and Mal Reese (John Vernon – probably best remembered as Dean Wormer in `Animal House’) retract an apparently illegal money payoff. Once the money is counted, Reese shoots Walker in a prison cell leaving him for tiring, and takes Walker’s $93,000. Walker recovers from the shooting and with the wait on of a stranger named Yost (Keenan Wynn), Walker finds out that Reese and Walker’s wife ran off to Los Angeles and Reese is now a vast player in a major crime syndicate. This sets up the rest of the movie where Walker hunts down Reese but also wants all of this $93,000 attend.
The movie is clearly sunless in mood and substance, even though it was filmed in vibrant color. Angie Dickenson plays the role of Walker’s sister-in-law Chris, who helps him fetch Reese. The chemistry between Chris and Walker seems overtly empty and sad. An bright Carroll O’Conner (best known for playing Archie Bunker in ‘All in the Family’) brings a lot of energy to the last segment of the movie. The film has an unmistakably leisurely `60′s glimpse with mercurial and chaotic flashbacks and over-accentuated sound effects – such as loud, reverberating footsteps when an intensely focused Lee Marvin is hunting down Reese. This movie is more sexual and violent than noir films of the `40′s and `50′s, but is unexcited restrained by today’s standards. The film’s biggest asset is how Lee Marvin confronts and handles his adversaries – each spot is fresh and effective, but not over the top. The spot as a whole has very few major surprises, although there is one minor twist in the kill. Overall, it’s an extremely respectable movie, but not a ample one, but I tranquil strongly recommend it.
As for the DVD, the transfer is first-rate. The portray quality is free of even the tiniest of flaws and the color is incandescent and smart and the sharpness is terrific for a film this old-fashioned. The audio is also obliging. There is option real-time commentary by director John Boorman and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, plus two short features, both made when the film was being shot in the gradual `60′s entitled the Rock Share I &II. These two documentaries deal with the filming of the scenes on Alcatraz that were dilapidated in `Point Blank’. Share II also contains a short interview with a feeble prisoner who did time on “The Rock”..
Movie: B+
DVD Quality: A+
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