- Point Blank is one of the strangest and most stylized neo-noir films I've ever seen. Deep down, I suspect that this was fledgling director John Boorman's attempt to emulate a French New Wave crime film subversively from within the Hollywood system. That apparently means lots of jumpy flashbacks and having a famous film heavy, Lee Marvin, single-mindedly seek revenge from everyone without ever intentionally killing anyone. Don't get me wrong--plenty of corpses accumulate during the course of the film, but Marvin's mononymous character Hunter never directly does any of the killing. He's just the sort of guy who manages to stumble upon death naturally everywhere he goes.
- The film opens at the recently decommissioned Alcatraz Prison, where Hunter, his wife Lynne (Sharon Acker), and his partner Reese (John Vernon), try to rip off an illicit fund transfer. Before the opening credits roll, Reese double-crosses Hunter, shoots him, and leaves him for dead. With a guy as crazy as Hunter, Reese should have checked for a pulse. The next time we see Hunter, he's on a harbor tour of Alcatraz with an unidentified man (Keenan Wynn) who wants to take down Reese and his organization. Hunter's first step is to visit Lynne, who answers questions that Hunter doesn't even ask just before killing herself with sleeping pills. His next target is a crooked car dealer (Michael Strong), whom Hunter takes for the opposite of a joyride. Now it's on to Reese.
- To get to Reese in his well-guarded penthouse, Hunter enlists the help of Lynne's sister Chris (Angie Dickinson). It turns out Reese has a thing for Chris, even if the feeling isn't exactly reciprocated. In a memorable sequence of events, Hunter creates various distractions in order to infiltrate the penthouse and, in the film's biggest surprise, basically just allows Reese to tumble off the balcony. Like I said, Hunter is a dangerous man to be around. Still, Hunter doesn't have his oft-mentioned $93,000. Back to the car dealer, whom we gather isn't long for this world, before moving on to the next big man (Carroll O'Connor). Can a revenge quest like this ever really end? Also, is it weird that Hunter gets together with his recently deceased wife's sister??
- The best scenes in Point Blank are certainly those in which a glowering Lee Marvin bullies somebody into killing themselves, intentionally or otherwise. Unlikely as it may seem, the film contains several such scenes, and they start to seem even more amusing as they accumulate. Unfortunately, Point Blank's directing and editing styles too often veer into a certain showy obnoxiousness, particularly when Hunter has flashbacks to situations that we have already witnessed multiple times. The staging, too, is sometimes too intentionally unrealistic, as when Hunter and Reese plan their initial caper while rolling around on a crowded floor (shown in flashback, naturally). If you want to see a great film featuring non-sequential storytelling and a grey-haired criminal obsessed with revenge, try Steven Soderbergh's The Limey. Sure, it was probably inspired in part by this film, but it's a vast improvement nonetheless.
- This was John Vernon's first major film.
