Review of Blow Out (1981) by David F — 27 Aug 2011

Whether you consider Brian DePalma a derivative hack that can't get his shock-horror roots behind him, a supplicant disciple worshipping at the altar of the Master, a misunderstood bravura auteur in his own right, or perhaps all of these, Blow-Out is a film worthy of reconsideration under all of these contexts.

The film is a hodgepodge of styles - cynical post-Watergate political thriller (with a fair amount of clumsy and lazy exposition at the film's beginning I might add), a knowing wink to the seedy side of low budget slasher film-making, while being in its own way, a seedy slasher film at times - and most of all, a loving homage to both Antonioni's questioning of the nature of perception combined with the visual wit and narrative framework of Hitchcock.

Assisted by legendary DP Vilmos Zsigmond, some shots are extraordinary but are as subtle as a train wreck, and the storytelling is not as airtight as it could be, but the pace is so well handled that they don't prove too distracting - and the finale, while a bit of a bittersweet sick joke, is definitely original.

Travolta does an adequate job here, but Nancy Allen seems a bit too dipsy.