Review of Blow Out (1981) by Brandon W — 12 Aug 2012

The voyeurism on display in the works of Brian DePalma should come as no surprise to those who research his life. When he was younger DePalma was neglected and ignored by hi parents who viewed his older brother as the superior more intelligent child and he set out to gain their attention and love as well as distinguish himself through the technology that so engrossed him. He became so adept at recording things in fact while still in Grade School he was payed a handsome sum by his mother too to sneak into his father's office and record him with his secretary unknowingly which he succeeded in doing and led to the dissolution of his parents marriage. It's this and other stories about young DePalma the voyeur that make Blow Out feel like such a personal film, despite being loosely based on the conspiracy thriller Blow Up, as well as taking cues from Frances Ford Coppola's superior and equally underrated though lightly less so in its day Masterpiece The Conversation. Blow Out's protagonist Jack Terry describes himself in a diner scene as the kid who took apart and rebuilt old radios, which seems by all accounts an apt description of DePalma and his own wife Nancy Allen is cast as the love interest. But despite the deep levels of personal connection DePalma obviously had with the story in writing the film, and indeed even high critical praise in its day, Blow Out went by largely unnoticed and rather than put DePalma on the map and increase the prospective roles for an at the time still growing as an actor John Travolta it did little to advance or hurt either of their careers. If the movie's so good could it really have had so little consequence that it took high praise from Quentin Tarantino and a Criterion re-release years later to give it any sort of popularity? Let's take a better crazy than dead look.

Our movie's hero is Jack Terry (John Travolta) as stated above, a sound man for shlocky B-Movies who used to work with the Police Department before a bad undercover operation. While working on Co-Ed Crazy Jack has been tasked with getting different sound effects than the library stuff and a better scream for the movie's first victim and so to accomplish the first part of this one night he sets out to record nature sounds near a lake. While recording he picks up a strange clicking sound, and than as a car starts driving across a bridge going over the lake, what he believes to be a gunshot follow by the tire blowing out and the car careening into the water. He rescues a girl who he later finds out is a make up salesman named Sally (Nancy Allen), but the driver dies in the crash. Later at the hospital he discovers the driver besides being a married man was none other than the Governor and a strong contender for the next President. He is told by an Associate of the Governor not to mention being there to anyone or the Girl to preserve the man's reputation, and that the police are ruling the death an accident despite Terry being convinced he's recorded a gunshot before the Blow Out. He sets out to prove it with the help of the unwilling Sally, all the while being tailed by the mysterious and ominous Burke (John Lithgow).

To begin with in the way of criticism this movie is dripping in a certain layer of 80s cheese, not enough to taint the whole project and not in an over the top terrible way but it's definitely there. Needless to say the movie focuses a lot on sound, and it does a great job in capturing a sound for the accident that makes it unclear whether a gunshot actually occurred while still making it entirely plausible, but despite this the movie has a corny 80s soundtrack that comes from out of nowhere and occasionally just drowns the viewer and annoyingly distracts from the rest of the picture, occasionally even laughably so. The plot is also a little too...big to be taken entirely seriously. Though masterfully played by the criminally underrated John Lithgow with a natural finesse Burke feels more like a comic book villain than a genuine shadowy boogeyman and the plot could have definitely benefited from being on a smaller scale. Hell one of the movies greatest strength is this paranoid atmosphere it creates as Terry starts to feel his theory and evidence unravel around him from the unseen but still there to us presence of Burke and that possibly could have benefited as the movie intensifies by not being sure who's behind it, how far they're willing to go or just what they're end goal is. Though honestly the movie's biggest weakness is just the end sequence which in a fairly grounded thriller suddenly goes all action movie. But still as far as visuals go, Blow Out is expertly crafted in a sort of pop noir that is distinctly DePalma, and the characters and story though both are flawed serve their purposes admirably well. What particularly impressed me about the film was how natural the acting was from John Travolta giving one of his finest performances as a slow to act but idealistic sideline type person, Nancy Allen as a supposed airhead who we see really just acts that way due to her position in life and a supporting turn by Dennis Franz as a scummy con man. Beyond how they're performed the characters besides Burke all feel fleshed out and three dimensional amid an increasingly bloated though still incredibly enjoyable story.

Well despite how negative any of that may have sounded I really enjoyed Blow Out. I love a decent bit of camp and the campy parts of this were as enjoyable as the serious parts even if they don't necessarily work well together. It's also cool to see an early role from John Travolta where he plays a serious adult character and not a slack jawed teenager, and despite his goofiness and not being in it that much John Lithgow might be my favorite part of the whole damn thing. So yeah it has flaws but Blow Out is a damn fine movie, at times a tense thriller and packs a surprising emotional blow at the end. It's a movie you can tell everyone involved in felt passionately about and it pays off in a very good and earnest film. I can see someone taking issue with the movie but I'd recommend it, seeing it as a lost gem of the 80s not one rightfully forgotten.