Tonight's movie pick is Point Blank, a classic revenge flick from 1967. Starring Lee Marvin, as a man left for dead who returns... well, he says it's for the money he was cheated out of. But it's really vengeance. Except he doesn't so much deliver retribution as signal its arrival. He shows up and bad things start happening. John Boorman directs, throwing some noir flourishes and a lotta art house chops into the mix (I was esp. struck by the way he plays sound from one scene over another). In addition to Marvin, who is brilliant, it's fun seeing many now-familiar faces in the cast, inc. Angie Dickinson, Carroll O'Connor, and Keenan Wynn, who were already well established by that point. Also, Marvin's original nemesis played by John Vernon (who would go on to play Dean Wormer, in Animal House) and an admiring sniper, played by James B. Sikking (Howard, from Hill Street Blues).
Oh yeah, and lotsa cool late-60s clothes, hairstyles, and cars. And a great fight scene during which Marvin punches some guy in the crotch. In all the movie fights I've seen, I don't think I've ever seen that. Kicking, sure, but this is the first crotch punch.
More, with spoilers, after the jump
Altho one way of looking at Point Blank is that Marvin's killing his way up the chain of command of the Organization, I don't think he actually kills anyone. He's responsible for all the deaths, but it's suicide, fall while running away, orchestrated sniper hits. At least for the big boys. This actually plays into the interpretation that he didn't survive Reese's betrayal and that he's back from the grave to exact revenge. I read somewhere just now that, in his DVD commentary, Boorman is open to this interpretation. Which makes it sound like he thinks it's a good idea but it wasn't what he was thinking about when he was actually making the movie.
From the novel The Hunter, by the ever-wonderful Donald E. Westlake (writing here as Richard Stark), the first of many to feature the character Parker (Walker in Point Blank, Porter in the Mel Gibson remake Payback, which raises the question, what did they have against the name Parker?). In the books it's clear that Parker is definitely not back from the grave. For whatever that's worth.
elsa and i watched this film on your recommendation. thanks!
the "back from the grave" interepretation sheds particular light on the lovemaking sequence between walker and his sister's wife, where the camera can't bear to show the two of them in bed together. the scene's a montage of every other possible walker-chris-lynne-reese coupling, as if walker and chris didn't actually do it.
ghostly or not, the ending gave me shivers.
it's true that walker didn't kill any *people*, but he sure killed the f*ck out of carroll o'connor's phone!