Review of Point Blank (1967) by Andrew S — 07 May 2009

Lee Marvin plays Walker, a small time tough guy who is double-crossed by his wife and best friend and left for dead in an Alcatraz cell. He finds his way off the island and goes on a dogged quest for payback, seeking his share of a heist and revenge against those who have wronged him.

Or does he? It might all just be in Walker?s imagination -- a dying man?s fantasy as he lies on the floor of a prison cell. With his dazzlingly baroque mise-en-scène and editing, director John Boorman brought New Wave modernism to American crime cinema and ushered in the neo-noir film.

It?s particularly appropriate that this fever dream of a movie should emanate from an Alcatraz cell, given the prison?s association with Al Capone and an earlier era of crime. It?s almost like the ghosts of the past are stumbling, dazed, through the San Francisco and Los Angeles of the late-sixties, where the Mob has transformed into the businessmen of corporate offices.

Marvin brings an extraordinarily intense vacancy to the role of Walker, a zombie of a man who single-mindedly pursues the money owed to him as though he?s driven by some kind of Pavlovian instinct. There?s none of the cool, laconic sarcasm that Marvin brought to his other films, just a worn out, distant, glazed look and a series of ferocious explosions of violence.

It?s a career best performance from one of the great screen actors.