Point Blank
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Movie Reviews of Point Blank
Movie Review: film noir art flick
Summary: 4 Stars
Lee Marvin is a one man wrecking crew who wants his money from the double crossers who left him for dead. Very stylish and mysterious. Great visual storytelling from director Boorman, great bad-ass performance from Marvin as the living embodiment of vengeance.Movie Review: Oldie But Goodie
Summary: 4 Stars
You can't beat the old ones. Watching this film you see a dozen or so others that were made from it including "Payback" starring Mel Gibson. Watch it. You won't be disappointed.
FkyG
Movie Review: Somewhere between beat and hippie
Summary: 4 Stars
What a wild portrayal of this period. FUN! I get where is shows the transition from beatnik to hippie. Something you might see at a Beatnik Coffee House. Cool man, cool!Movie Review: Point Blank
Summary: 4 Stars
film noir in effect in this film. very dark story. tough guy Lee Marvin is great in this role.Movie Review: Vastly overrated by other reviewers here
Summary: 3 Stars
It always makes me laugh to see a well-written and fairly argued low-star review on this site get all sorts of unhelpful votes, as some of them do for this movie. The votes aren't really against the review: they're for daring to have a dissenting viewpoint. Such a crime! What is wrong with some reviewers; are their egos and self-worth so tied up in their favorite works of (someone else's) art that a viewer who doesn't like it must be showered with scorn for disagreeing with their opinion? Do they see it as a personal attack on their self-worth (such as it is, stemming from others' achievements)? Are their lives so empty that to disagree with them is a crime? Apparently so. How nice to not be living their lives, and to know a boring movie when one sees it.
I just watched this last night having read no reviews etc, going in cold, the best way to see a film in my estimation. And by the end I was quite convinced that the only really good thing about this movie was Lee Marvin.
I've enjoyed some Boorman films and found others corny in their over-reaching, and I think his direction is one of the weakest aspects of Point Blank. The script has fair dialogue but is full of holes; we are never really shown Walker's deepest motivations apart from "I want my money!", and the rather pointless ending sort of obviates them anyways. Boorman is so worried about getting the most noir-looking (but not noir-feeling) and "modern" camera angles and pans etc that he neglects to deal with all sorts of small and large fissures in the plot and script.
I don't want to notice a camera angle; I want to be transported BY it. The shot is not the end, it's a means to an end: furthering the story and character development. If, as in Coppola and Hitchcock and Truffaut and other greats, the shot is also pure art, excellent. But Boorman wants us to notice the Art Of Boorman more than Marvin or the story or even the wonderful SF locales, and ends up achieving neither.
Marvin is taciturn and believable as always; he usually delivered, and he carries this film all the way. Vernon is good enough as the bad guy (in his first role, and he stayed type-cast in that role for his whole career), but Dickinson and the others here are merely fair (Wynn is good but rarely seen). The oft-silly plot peregrinations do none of them any favors, though, and Boorman's own insistence on being noticed makes it all seem like a failed movie-student effort by the end.
I couldn't ever really enter the world of this film, despite it being set in one of my favorite towns, in an era when that town was ripe for great cinematography. Even Alcatraz seemed misused, and how exactly can bad guys fly a chopper in there weekly without the cops noticing? That's only one of many plot holes that Boorman left in place...and yet this is a five star movie? I don't think so.
I think some reviewers just want to feel that they have found some old gem in this and other semi-b-movies with pretensions to greatness, and it becomes their pet. How dare you give my secret discovery a bad rating?! I will unhelpful you!
Well, go ahead, kids, because this movie is barely above a turkey, and no amount of negative votes can rescue the fact that this is neither a decent film noir homage nor a very moving crime flick. It's just another mediocre 60s crime drama saved by Lee Marvin...and there are plenty of those to go around.
But hey...if your existence is vitiated by giving unhelpful votes in place of an intelligent comment pointing out flaws in a review, please justify yourself to yourself. Otherwise, a comment always goes a lot farther...though it may reveal one's fanboy status.
And to those pondering watching this, please read the bad reviews as well as the good, as ever, and then ask yourself, which make more sense?