Point Blank (1967)

Point Blank (1967)

Director: John Boorman

Starring: Lee Marvin

There are two kinds of people in his uptight world: His victims and his women. And sometimes you can’t tell them apart.

After being betrayed during a robbery Walker wants revenge, but most of all he just wants his money.

Point Blank stars Lee Marvin who – BANG! BANG! – Holy crap, Lee Marvin was just shot! Oh wait, no he’s not, they were just showing two other people being shot during the robbery rather than – BANG! My bad, that was him getting shot after all! Point Blank starts in breathless fashion with Marvin’s character Walker (his first name never is revealed) being shot and then we quickly go forwards and backwards in time showing how he came to be recruited for the job and what led him to receiving a bullet when he is betrayed by his friend Mal Reese (John Vernan) who takes not only Walker’s share of the money but also his wife Lynne (Sharon Acker). As far as movie openings go the start to John Boorman’s Point Blank makes quite the first impression. Your confused mind might initially think that Walker was just killed, as he wonders to himself “How did I get her?”, and that you are about to be shown the events that lead to his demise with him talking us through them with a posthumous narration ala’ American Beauty, or Sunset Boulevard for you movie buffs, or Desperate Housewives for you lovers of trashy American TV (like me!)

But fear not as Walker is alive and well. Or is he? A weird question it would seem as the rest of the film shows Lee Marvin on his journey of revenge and to reclaim the stolen money that was stolen from him (he stole that money fair and square!). However the movie has an almost dream-like state to it with the constant brief flashbacks throughout as if we are watching a dying man’s life flash before his eyes, or a wish fulfilment fantasy of a man about to meet his maker. I mean the guy is shot at *ahem* point blank and left for dead at the now recently closed Alcatraz prison where the robbery took place. It seems unlikely that someone could survive that and even if he did he would still have to swim back to shore, something, we are told in the next scene by a tour guide, has never been done even by the few that did escape the prison. The flashbacks are usually only a second long on average but the scattered timeframe, even if most of the film is in order, could be interpreted as being the last thoughts of Walker as in real life most people’s thoughts are never linear. I am not saying the movie is that, it just be a straight up revenge plot and you could simply watch it that way and enjoy it, but it is a movie that makes you think about it afterwards.

Even if all of this film is happening there are rumours that Marvin’s character could be a ghost. After all fans of the film will point out the surprising fact that despite the movie’s death count Walker himself doesn’t actually kill anybody. Yes Mal falls from the roof of his hotel (in a very poor effect- the worst part of the film for me) but that was an accident and Reece fell off the roof more so than him being pushed. Maybe Walker’s ghost simply scared him to death? Scaring people to death would make sense with what happens to his Walker’s wife. Also at the movie’s end when *SPOILER ALERT* Yost (Keenan Wynn) leaves the $93,000 out for Walker to collect, Walker never takes it. So maybe he was never really there and Yost simply left the money out to rid himself of Walker’s evil spirit and not befall the same fate as the rest Marvin’s victims?

I have suspicions myself about the mysterious character of Yost. We first see him in the earlier mentioned scene with the tour guide giving us the history of Alcatraz but we are given no context to how he knows Walker and he always seems to reappear whenever Walker really needs information of the mysterious organisation that have his money. Until the end he’s like Walker’s figurative guardian angel who actually reminded me a little of It’s a Wonderful Life’s literal guardian angel Clarence Odbody. Maybe Walker is alive but Yost is simply a figment of his imagination. Wait, that doesn’t really work, because Yost seems real enough at the end… Maybe I need to stop overthinking everything and get some sleep.

Even if you don’t buy into the whole ‘Walker is dead’ theory, and I don’t think I really do myself, there is still lots to enjoy here with my favourite aspect of the film being the cinematography and editing. This is a really beautifully made movie and it didn’t have to be. It could have just been your run-of-the-mill revenge thriller, and I am sure I will be reviewing some of them as we continue on through the years, but instead this is quite the work of art. I know I said The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was a work of art too, and I came close to saying that about Le Samourai, and I am going not to try and overuse that phrase but it does apply here. There are three moments that really made me want to applaud the film. The first was when Walker arrives at the airport on his way to (shall we say greet?) his backstabbing ex-wife and Mal who are now lovers. We see Walker walking through the airport with the volume of his footsteps on the marbled floor being turned way up before the camera cuts back and forth between Lynne at her apartment and Walker getting ever closer to her with the sound of the footsteps continuing throughout all the shots. The constant rhythm of Walker’s walk is like that of a marching band or, even more apt, a war drum as he closes in on his enemies ready for battle.

The second little trick I adored was when, in a fabulous scene, Lynne is telling Walker that she did once love him, recalls when he introduced her to Mal and reminisces of the times when  the three of them were happy before she sadly ends with how she slowly grew feelings for Walker’s best friend. The scene was supposed to have Lee Marvin’s character ask her questions back and forth to find out why she betrayed him, but according to Boorman Lee didn’t say his next line so Sharon Acker just continued on with the answers without him saying a word. Marvin brought a lot of his own ideas to the role and this was an inspired one as the scene plays out so wonderfully with Lynne guiltily figuratively writing her own confession. What I really loved about the whole scene however was a flashback we see of the three of them in happier times riding in the front of a car. Lynne playfully takes Walker’s sunglasses off his face, tries them on herself, before perhaps symbolically putting them on Reece. We hear her explain to Marvin “I just drifted towards Mal” and the camera literally drifts slightly to the right, cropping Walker out of the picture altogether. It’s so well done.

My third favourite artistic touch occurs later when Walker meets Lynne’s sister Chris (Angie Dickinson). Mal it turns out had left Lynne for her sister Chris and although it’s implied they hooked up she claims he makes her skin crawl. Chris then helps Walker take down Mal and the two of them in up in bed together. Chris rolls on top of Walker but we get a jump cut flashback with Lynne rolling on top of Walker from when they were married. Walker in turn rolls on top of Lynne but another jump cut replaces him with Mal showing us a moment during their affair. We then see Chris replace Lynne before Mal is replaced by Walker in similar jump cuts until we get back to our present day couple. It was a superbly done sequence reminding us of the tangle web these four characters have woven. It also adds to the “Is this really happening?” undercurrent. Plus it finally uses jump cuts effectively rather than the editing short cuts I discussed in the Bond movies and Come Drink with Me.

Director John Boorman would later go on to have a very successful, if not that prolific, career and he’s still going having released his latest movie in 2014 at the age of 81. However this was just his second movie and the new director had to fight for the film to remain in his vision. It all started when he met Lee Marvin on the set of The Dirty Dozen (a movie I concluded is not really eligible for this action blog) and presented him with a script based on the novel The Hunter by Donald E Westlake. Neither Marvin nor Boorman liked the script but both were fascinated by the character of Walker. Marvin agreed to the role, tossed aside the script, and called a meeting with the head of the studio, the producers, his agent and Boorman. Marvin used his star power to ask the studio heads and producers as to whether he had script approval and they said he did. Marvin then asked if he had approval of the principle cast and again they said yes. He then replied that he deferred all decisions to Boorman and left the meeting selflessly giving the new director all the power.

Even with Lee Marvin giving him complete control over the film the executives were said to be perplexed when they saw the final cut of the movie and were talking about reshoots. Perhaps they didn’t like the use of flashbacks or couldn’t see the artistry at hand here but it didn’t matter as legendary editor Margaret Booth, who had just been nominated for an Oscar for editing for 1965’s Mutiny on the Bounty, firmly reassured Boorman by saying “You touch one frame of this film over my dead body!” Neither Boorman nor the executives changed anything.

Lee Marvin is an actor I am well aware of but I am not sure why as besides The Dirty Dozen, which I saw when I was very young and can’t remember anything about, I don’t think I have ever seen him in anything. He was magnificent here with his steely, cold-blooded determination. Usually in movies when a character is out for revenge and wants to kill someone they first stop to speak to the person they’ve tracked down in an Indigo Montoya fashion, but not here. Don’t get me wrong the “My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my Father. Prepare to die” was such a rewarding moment as in The Princess Bride we needed Montoya to let his six fingered fiend know exactly why he was going to die and the pay-off worked, but usually the hero, who has been on a quest thinking of nothing but vengeance, at the point he could get revenge stops for a one-liner or for a quick conversation first and it takes me out of it.

With Point Blank we know why Walker wants revenge, Mal knows too, but even so I was still stunned when Marvin bursts into his house and shoots Reece’s bed without even having time to check if he is in it first. Such vicious tunnel-versioned awesomeness. Of course the next time he sees Mal he doesn’t kill him on sight which is a shame, but by that point he’s also aiming to get back his money too and needs information so I’ll let him off even if it does kind of go against the previous scene and his earlier characterisation in way. I also found Marvin’s bafflement about everyone saying they can’t pay him to be so amusing. He says “Well somebody has to pay” in such a low-key way as if he were returning a faulty product to a store in exchange for a refund rather than asking for $93,000. Also the fight in the middle of this movie was nearly as good as the one in From Russia with Love and Walker fighting dirty (he punched a guy in the balls!) fitted his no-nonsense character down to a tee. I’ll be talking about another Lee Marvin movie much later on my blog, but I doubt that will be anywhere close to being this good.

I am a little nervous about watching some of the 1970’s action movies as there are a lot I have never seen before and I have this pre-conceived notion that a ton of them are going to be grim, gritty, humourless violent films and I thought Point Blank was going to be the first one of that ilk I’d review in this blog. In lesser hands this film would be just that, not that those style of movies are aall bad and they will make a change from the Bonds that are going to get sillier and sillir as we go on, but Boorman’s and Marvin’s wonderful ideas and foresight help turn what could have just been a standard revenge film into a beautifully little gem of a movie. Lastly I have to say how amazing it is that they shoot on location with the first scenes taken place actually at Alcatraz. It was filmed at the prison just three years after the it closed and was the first ever movie to be shot there. It will not be the last time we talk about Alcatraz on my blog.

9/10- A revenge action movie with brains and style.

Best quote: I am going to go with this whole conversation because the first line which was delivered in such a camp way was hilarious, not least because it was a huge understatement and the final delivery with Walker stating that everything really is as it seems was amazing.

“You’re a very bad man, Walker, a very destructive man! Why do you run around doing things like this?”

“I want my money. I want my $93,000.”

“$93,000? You threaten a financial structure like this for $93,000? No, Walker, I don’t believe you. What do you really want?”

“I - I really want my money.”

Best scene: Walker marching through the airport with his footsteps echoing that of a war drum.

Kick-ass moment: No-nonsense Walker, bursting into his wife’s house, restraining her, and shooting the bed without even having time to check if his intended target was there. This guy is not to be fucked with.

Next time on a Bloody Tomorrow we go back to Hong Kong for the uplifting story of a man who comes with the disability of losing an arm by.... Well, by killing a lot of people.