Review of Blow Out (1981) by Wesley C — 16 Jun 2007

My main reason to see this film was because its piano theme was sampled by Quentin Tarantino in this year's "Death Proof." After seeing this, I looked the movie up and found it to look pretty interesting, so I rented it.

It's one of those movies that I started really late one night, not really planning on finishing it. However, after the amazing horror schlock / B-movie opening, I couldn't not finish this movie.

It was a B-movie thriller from start to finish and it was just what I was looking for in a late night movie. I've heard that De Palma lifted a lot from Coppola's "The Conversation" and Antonioni's "Blow Up," but in the end, I don't really care.

Everything in this movie worked for me. I loved De Palma's overly stylish direction, Pino Donaggio's beautiful score (great love theme), and the paranoid feeling that comes with most conspiracy theory movies.

I loved De Palma's use of sound, especially in the scene where John Travolta's character is recording sounds on the bridge at night. I know a lot of people felt that the direction was too stylish, but I loved every minute of it; my favorite bit being the sequence between John Lithgow and a potential victim in the subway.

All about those phone booths. The performances were all pretty dead on. I'm not the biggest John Travolta fan, but his work here was pretty solid. It was really weird seeing John Lithgow play a serial killer since I'm so used to him being in comedies like "Harry and the Hendersons.

" Still, he was incredibly creepy. The ending was definitely one for the books. While I wasn't incredibly surprised at what happened at the celebration, John Travolta's decision at the end in the audio editing was really surprising to me.

I wasn't sure if his character would do that at first, but the look of grimace on his face when he does it was enough for me.