Reeling Backward: Point Blank (1967)
John Boorman's first American film was this tight crime thriller, spare to the bone in storytelling but highly stylized in the way it was shot, following a crook out for revenge.
There’s an interesting dichotomy about “Point Blank,” the 1967 film noir from British director John Boorman (“Deliverance,” “Hope and Glory”), and one of my most cherished filmmakers. It’s spare to the bone in terms of tone and storytelling, with the lead character barely uttering more than a page of dialogue throughout the whole thing.
But the way it’s shot is highly stylized and inventive — almost to the point of distraction.
I’m not a big fan of “look at me” type of direction. I define it as when the filmmaker aesthetic seems more concerned with coming up with the most inventive shots that exist for their own sake rather than doing what best drives the story. Terrence Malick is the king of this sort of cinema, featuring egregious cutaways and artsy-fartsy compositions to add “context” to what’s happening.
It pains me to say, but there’s a fair amount of this stuff in “Point Blank.” In particular he loves to have his camera linger after a notable piece of violence, framing the main character’s face as he ponders emotionless over what has just happened. There’s even some very 1960s-style color bleeds, freeze frames and other moves that seem tossed in because they seem cool and French New Wave-y.
I’ll give Boorman a break. It was just his second feature and his first narrative film after making documentaries about British football and the pop group The Dave Clark Five. He soon toned things down and turned out a string of amazing films, including 1981’s “Excalibur,” an all-time favorite.
It’s a tight crime story, featuring Lee Marvin as Walker, a professional crook seeking revenge on other criminals who did him wrong. He helped pull a job to steal a drop of money at the abandoned Alcatraz Prison (presumably an exchange for drugs) and was due a $93,000 cut of the take.
(Approaching a million bucks in today’s dollars.)
Instead Walker’s partner and friend, Mal Reese (John Vernon, forever Dean Wormer from “Animal House”), betrayed and gut-shot him, stealing his wife, Lynne (Sharon Acker), to boot. Some goodly amount of time later, he’s recovered — with a scar on his belly resembling a second navel — and has come for his money, his girl, or both.
There’s a certain amount of desire for revenge, of course, but Walker truly seems motivated most to get the money, not just for the financial gain but because in his mind he’s earned it. One senses if, for wild reasons inconsistent with a Hollywood screenplay, Mal decided to just hand over the 93 grand Walker would take it and walk away without complaint.
But then we wouldn’t have a movie.
The script by Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse and Rafe Newhouse was adapted from the pulp novel “The Hunter” by Richard Stark. The main character in that, named Parker instead of Walker, would appear in 28 total books.
The movie doesn’t attempt to redeem Walker in any way or make him seem like a noble criminal operating under his own code of morals. He’s defined by his professionalism, which includes an abhorrence of double-crossing whoever you’re working with.
Marvin works this angle hard, giving Walker a dead-eye stare and seeming complete lack of empathy for others.
Early on he tracks down Lynne, since dumped by Mal, who confesses she had been carrying on with Mal even before the job, admitting she was wrong. Having unburdened herself she swallows a bottle of sleeping pills. Discovering her corpse, Walker removes his wedding ring and places it on her finger above her own — marking the end of the job.
In his quest Walker is given passive assistance by a mysterious figure played by Keenan Wynn, who Walker at first assumes is a cop of some sort. Maybe a shadowy government agency. He wants Walker’s help in taking down The Organization, the crime syndicate that Mal is a part of. Apparently he was on the outs, and used the take from the job with Walker to buy his way back in.
As Walker crawls deeper into this maze, it becomes apparent The Organization is the ultimate modern villain: a corporation engaged in super-legal dealings. Walker kills one representative and then another, and seems no closer to his goal of recovering his money.
Eventually he runs into Brewster, the accountant of the group, played by Carroll O'Connor. He seems completely bewildered by the idea of a big guy with a gun demanding a cash payout from him.
“We deal in millions. We never see cash. I got about $11 in my pocket,” Brewster says, before soon getting his.
Angie Dickinson turns up as Chris, Lynne’s sister, who is running a club at the behest of Mal and agrees to seduce him as part of Walker’s plan to gain access to the fortified hotel where he lives, the Huntley. Mal, ever the stern tough guy, turns to jelly when confronted, and eventually does a header in the nude over the balcony for a very juicy street splat.
Walker later beds Chris himself, though when it’s time to ascend the next rung up the ladder of The Organization, she receives a curt dismissal. Theirs is truly a love/hate relationship, with her smacking him around in a turnabout of the usual tough guy/gun moll dynamic, even nearly knocking him unconscious with a pool cue.
Never armed with anything more extravagant than a snub-nosed revolver, Walker always seems one step ahead of his foes. When Carter (Lloyd Bochner) agrees to pay him off, arranging to meet a henchman at the Los Angeles concrete riverway, Walker quickly sniffs it out as an assassination attempt, forcing Carter to take the sniper’s bullet on his behalf. The wrapped block of cash, revealed to be just paper, gets glumly kicked into the river’s turgid flow.
Things end up back at Alcatraz with another cash drop. The Wynn character is revealed to be Yost, the last remaining principal of The Organization, who was just using Walker to knock off his partners. They try to repeat the sniper gig but Walker is too smart for them, waiting off in the shadows as the credits roll.
We wonder if he ever claims the money, or prefers to just continue his spree.
One thing that struck me watching the movie: everybody’s old. Or at least, they are very much presented as not young and hip. Despite being made in the late 1960s, all the men wear suits and ties everywhere they go. Marvin has his signature premature gray hair, and Walker seems better placed in a 1947 movie than ‘67.
He even shoots his gun the way depicted in Golden Age movies: the guy pushes his revolver forward while pulling the trigger, almost like pointing out the target, as if this kinetic motion will somehow propel the bullets to come out even faster.
I can’t say as I found “Point Blank” to be one of Boorman’s most memorable films — it comes across as a fairly standard crime flick with a patina of fancy director’s tricks. I enjoyed Marvin’s brutal take on the Walker character, but time spent with him isn’t exactly a picnic.
He’s a hard, fast, mean MF who’s all about the job. There are worst things to be.