POINT
BLANK
Directed by John Boorman
US 1967 | 92 mins | Cert 15
Directed by John Boorman
US 1967 | 92 mins | Cert 15
With: Lee Marvin,
Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn
A BFI release
Release
date: 29 March 2013
At the BFI
Southbank plus selected venues nationwide
John Boorman’s American debut remains a
landmark crime movie, mixing fast-paced, hard-hitting Hollywood action with
European stylistic experimentation and cool, existential enquiry to lastingly
intoxicating effect.
Heading up a slew of actors who can only be
described as ‘iconic’, Lee Marvin is cast to career-best perfection as Walker,
an old-school gangster left to die in Alcatraz after an otherwise successful
heist. Like some anachronistic avenging angel, he returns to seek out those who
betrayed him and retrieve his share of the loot from the outwardly respectable,
strangely faceless ‘Organisation’. But does Walker belong, can he still
function in this world?
Bringing
a sharp outsider’s eye – and Philip Lathrop’s superb Scope compositions – to
the strikingly angular cityscapes of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Boorman
also deployed a teasingly fragmented chronology, innovative sound design and
careful colour schemes to create a consistently surprising, acerbically witty
and gripping narrative that finally constitutes a vengeful dream of vain
desires. Though there have been subsequent adaptations of Donald Westlake’s The
Hunter, this terse masterpiece remains by far the best, and still feels
extraordinarily, exhilaratingly modern. – Geoff Andrew
1 comment:
Never tire of seeing this great film. Jason Statham as the latest Walker/Parker just doesn't cut it. Completists should get the special edition DVD of Brian Helgeland's Payback (in which Parker is Porter, played by Mel Gibson) which has two completely different versions of the same film.
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