Point Blank is a 1967 American crime movie directed by John Boorman. It stars Lee Marvin and includes Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn, and Carroll O'Connor in supporting roles. The film is based on the 1962 crime story book The Hunter, which is the first book in the Parker series written by Donald E. Westlake under the name Richard Stark. Boorman directed the movie because Marvin asked him to, and Marvin helped shape how the movie was made. In 1967, the film earned more than $9 million from movie showings. Over time, it became a cult classic, meaning many people now greatly enjoy and admire it. Film historian David Thomson praised the movie. In 2016, Point Blank was considered important for its culture, history, or art by the United States Library of Congress. It was chosen to be kept in the National Film Registry for preservation.
Plot
Walker works with his friend Mal Reese to steal money from a large crime group. They attack a courier on the empty island of Alcatraz. After counting the stolen money, Reese shoots Walker, leaving him for dead. Reese takes the money and Walker’s wife, Lynne. Walker recovers and, with help from a mysterious man named Yost, begins searching for Reese to get his share of the money, $93,000. Reese used all the money to pay back a debt to a crime group called “The Organization.” Walker goes to Los Angeles and shoots bullets into Lynne’s bed, only to find Reese has already left. Lynne becomes very sad and later dies from taking too many sleeping pills.
Walker asks a car dealer named Stegman for information. He breaks a new car and scares Stegman until Stegman reveals Reese is with Walker’s sister-in-law, Chris. Walker breaks into Chris’s home and learns she dislikes Reese and admires Walker. She agrees to help by having a romantic meeting with Reese in his heavily protected apartment, where she will unlock a door for Walker. Walker ties up men in an apartment across from the penthouse and calls the police to create a distraction, allowing him to enter the penthouse.
With a gun to Reese’s head, Walker forces him to reveal the names of his crime group leaders—Carter, Brewster, and Fairfax—so Walker can get his money back. He then drags Reese, wrapped in a bedsheet, to a balcony and tells him both will meet Carter. A bodyguard turns on the lights in the room they left, startling Walker. He pulls back, still holding Reese by the bedsheet. Reese, also pulling back, accidentally falls off the balcony and dies. Walker watches him fall.
Walker later confronts Carter for his money but is tricked into a trap. A sniper is hired to kill him during a money pickup in Los Angeles. Walker suspects a trap and makes Carter retrieve the money instead. Carter and Stegman are both shot, but the sniper leaves. Walker opens the money package and finds only blank paper.
Yost takes Walker to a house owned by Brewster. Walker visits Chris, whose apartment has been destroyed by The Organization. He brings Chris to Brewster’s home, claiming it is safer. While waiting for Brewster, Chris hits and slaps Walker, who does not defend himself. She leaves the room. Walker later finds Chris in the kitchen, where she turns on appliances and mocks him. They argue, then share a romantic moment and sleep together. The next day, Brewster returns and is attacked by Walker, who demands his money. Walker forces Brewster to call Fairfax, but Fairfax refuses to pay. Brewster says the only available cash is in San Francisco and explains, “The drop has changed, but the run is still the same.”
At Fort Point, Walker hides as a courier delivers money. A sniper shoots Brewster. Yost appears and tells Brewster it was not Walker who shot him. Brewster shouts, “This is Fairfax, Walker! Kill him!”
Yost/Fairfax thanks Walker (who remains hidden) for killing his dangerous followers. He says, “Our deal’s done, Walker. Brewster was the last one.” He offers Walker a partnership, but Walker stays silent. Yost/Fairfax and the hitman leave, leaving the money on the ground.
Production
The film was the second made by Irwin Winkler, who had just completed Double Trouble at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Winkler and Judd Bernard believed the Point Blank script was perfect for Lee Marvin. They tried to send the script to Marvin but instead sent it to John Boorman, a director Winkler knew from his work in management. Filmink noted that the movie had many connections to Nat Cohen, as Winkler had worked on Darling, and Boorman and writer Alex Jacobs had recently made Catch Us if You Can for Cohen.
Boorman met Marvin in London, where the actor was filming The Dirty Dozen. They discussed a script based on Donald Westlake’s book The Hunter. Both disliked the script but admired the main character, Walker. After agreeing to make the film, Marvin rejected the script and called a meeting with the studio head, producers, his agent, and Boorman. As Boorman recalled, Marvin asked, “Do I have final approval of the script?” When told “yes,” he asked, “Do I have final approval of the main cast?” When told “yes,” he said, “I give those approvals to John [Boorman].” Then he left. On his first film in Hollywood, Boorman had final control over the movie.
MGM agreed to fund the film with a budget of $2 million. Robert Weitman, MGM’s head of production, wanted Stella Stevens to play the female lead, but Boorman and Marvin insisted on Angie Dickinson. Winkler later said he was not surprised when Stevens was cast in a later MGM film, Sol Madrid.
The film’s unusual structure came partly from the original script, which followed the book’s non-linear format, and changes made during filming. Rehearsals took place at Marvin’s home in Los Angeles. During one rehearsal, Marvin refused to speak his lines when asking Sharon Acker about money, forcing Acker to continue the scene alone. Boorman said, “I saw right away he was right. Lee never gave suggestions. He would just show you.” Boorman changed the script so Acker would ask and answer Marvin’s questions, a change that appears in the final film.
This was the first movie filmed at Alcatraz Island, a famous prison in San Francisco that had closed in 1963, just three years before the production. For two weeks, 125 crew members worked at the abandoned prison. Marvin and Wynn enjoyed filming there, but Wynn worried about the weather and the need to record some lines again. During the shoot, Angie Dickinson and Sharon Acker wore modern clothing for a Life Magazine photo taken at the prison. Acker was accidentally hurt by blanks used in a scene where Vernon shot at Marvin.
Director Boorman chose locations described as “stark.” For example, the airplane terminal walkway where Marvin walked originally had flower pots on the walls. Boorman removed the pots to make the setting “all bare.” After showing the finished film to executives, they were confused and talked about reshoots. Margaret Booth, the supervising film editor for MGM, told Boorman as the executives left, “You touch one frame of this film over my dead body!”
Reception
The film made $9 million from theater earnings during its first release.
In a 1967 review in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote: "A brutal new melodrama is called Point Blank, and it is." She later described the film as "sometimes very impressive" and voted for John Boorman as Best Director in the 1967 National Society of Film Critics Awards. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and said, "as suspense thrillers go, Point Blank is pretty good." Leonard Maltin gave the film three and a half stars and wrote: "Taut thriller, ignored in 1967, but now [2008] regarded as a top film of the decade."
In The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther described the movie as "spectacularly stylized and vividly photographed" and noted that director John Boorman "did an amazing job of getting the look and smell of Los Angeles into the texture of his picture." He also said, "This is not a pretty picture for the youngsters—or, indeed, for anyone with indelicate taste."
In a 2003 review, Slant critic Nick Schager wrote: "What makes Point Blank so extraordinary is not its departures from genre conventions, but Boorman's skillful use of unusual artistic styles to create a classic noir mood of tiredness and romanticized fate."
The film has a score of 93% on review site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 43 reviews. The site's critics consensus states: "Shot with hard-hitting inventiveness and performed with pitiless cool by Lee Marvin, Point Blank is a revenge thriller that shows the genre's strengths with extreme focus." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on 15 critics, which means "universal acclaim."
Themes
Viewers and critics have often asked if the film shows a dream that Walker has after he is shot at the beginning. The film's director, John Boorman, did not give his opinion: "What it is, is what you see," he said. Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh described Point Blank as a "memory film" for Marvin. Boorman believes the film focuses on Lee Marvin's harsh experiences in World War II, which made him feel less human and caused him to search strongly for his humanity.
Critic David Thomson wrote that Walker is actually dead throughout the movie, and the events show the stages of revenge in his dream. Others have considered this idea. Brynn White asked if Walker is a living person or a ghost, "a ghost-like form of bitter revenge barely holding onto Boorman's varied scenes." Boorman said, "He could just as easily be a ghost or a shadow." Some critics describe Point Blank as "a haunted, dream-like film that uses the ways of showing time and space found in modern European art films," especially the "time-fractured" movies of French director Alain Resnais.
Style
Point Blank mixes styles from film noir with ideas from the European nouvelle vague movement. The movie uses a broken timeline, like the book's non-linear story, and has unusual pacing, with long, slow scenes mixed with sudden moments of violence. The film also uses space carefully, showing scenes like concrete riverbeds, wide bridges, and empty prison cells in artistic ways. Boorman said Marvin helped create many of the film's visual symbols. As the movie progressed, scenes were filmed using mostly one color, such as the cool blues and grays in Acker's apartment, Dickinson's yellow bathrobe, and the bright red wall in Vernon's penthouse. This gave the story a feeling of being unreal.
To show Walker's larger-than-life image, Soderbergh explained in a commentary that the film cuts between a scene of Walker swimming away from Alcatraz Island and a scene of him on a ferry looking at the same island. A woman on a loudspeaker describes how leaving the island is impossible. Soderbergh said this contrast between Walker's easy escape and the loudspeaker's words makes the character seem mythical right away.
Legacy
Point Blank is praised in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die as "the perfect thriller in both form and vision." Film historian David Thomson calls the film a masterpiece. Thomson explains: "[…] this is not just a cool, violent pursuit film, it is a dream filled with longing and one of the great reflections on how movies are fantasies that we reach for all the time—it's singin' in the rain again, the white lie that erases night." Director Steven Soderbergh has said that he used stylistic touches from Point Blank many times in his filmmaking career.
The Hunter was also the basis for Brian Helgeland's Payback (1999), starring Mel Gibson. Director Boorman has joked that Payback was so bad that Gibson must have taken the original script for Point Blank that Boorman and Marvin had thrown out.
On March 29, 1968, Point Blank was screened at Cinelândia movie theaters in Brazil to protest the murder of 18-year-old high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto by the military police of Rio de Janeiro. Souto was shot at point-blank range. Protesters wrote phrases such as "Do bullets kill hunger?", "Old people in power, young people in coffins," and "They killed a student… what if it was your son?" on the movie posters. The aftermath of Souto's death was one of the first major public protests against the Brazilian military government.
Lee Marvin expressed concern with his role in the film years later. In a 1983 interview, when asked about watching himself onscreen, he responded: "How did I feel when I saw myself on the screen? I found it very unpleasant recently when I saw a film of mine called Point Blank, which was a violent film. We made it for the violence. I was shocked at how violent it was. Of course, that was ten, fifteen, eighteen years ago. When I saw the film I literally almost could not stand up, I was so weak. I did that? I am capable of that kind of violence? See, there is the fright; and this is why I think guys back off eventually. They say, 'No, I'm not going to put myself to those demons again.' The demon being the self."