Along with Arthur Penn's "Bonnie And Clyde", this movie shook up mainstream, American filmmaking, introducing cutting edge, New Wave European cinema into traditional U.S. genres.....
Violent, totally amoral, visually striking, and defiantly unlinear in its storytelling, this was film conceived as a purely sensory experience.......astounding audiences used to a three-act structure in every studio film and confounding movie critics at the time.....
Old school New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, whose clueless pan of "Bonnie And Clyde" eventually finished his career, approached "Point Black" like a swooning little old lady perched on top of a chair, screaming at the sight of mouse.....
John Boorman, part of the tidal wave of Brit directors who stormed Hollywood in the 60's, makes "Point Black" look like a bullet-ridden fashion shoot, placing most of the high gloss action in Los Angeles. Though rendered in brilliantly sharp Metrocolor, Boorman's sun-drenched L.A. becomes as much of a noirish, dangerous landscape as any dark alley in a black-and-white 1940's movie......
Starting off on deserted Alcatraz island, a gangsters-heisting-gangsters caper goes awry, with a hood named Walker (Lee Marvin) shot and left for dead, betrayed by his partner (John Vernon) and Walker's wife (Sharon Acker).....
In true noir fashion, the bullet perforated Walker manages to float across the choppy, freezing waters of San Francisco bay, thirsting for revenge and 93,000 dollars, his cut of the stolen haul......back from the dead and ready to rumble, Walker has an ally in a shadowy operative (Keenan Wynn) who seeks to dismantle 'The Organization', the corporate mob that Walker's double crossing partner rejoined.
From this point on , the taciturn Walker, given to expressing his rage by shooting empty beds and phones, works his way through the 'Organization's upper echelon, who can't fathom his demand for the 93,000 that wasn't even his to begin with. (Marvin's Walker reminded us of the relentless paperboy in the John Cusack comedy "Better Off Dead", screaming "I want my two dollars!")
Brutal beatings and shootings ensue, all of the mayhem staged by Boorman for maximum photogenic style. Like many independent films to come, the movie comes to no satisfying conclusion......it simply stops. It leaves you free to contemplate an "Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" ending for Walker, which many have theorized.....or to come up with your own climax.
Ice cold and suitable for framing, Boorman's work here pre-dates the coming of big-budget visualists like Michael Mann and Ridley Scott......and in its embracing of flash and color over logic and sense, you can see a sneak preview of the beginnings of the our modern day blockbusters.
What we find ironic (and more than a little sad).....while as hip and modern as any current film, .it's the postcard-bright color cinematography that gives it away as belonging to another era....we'd love some of today's directors and cameramen to give up their usual muddy, dark, brownish visuals and go for the Technicolor gusto......just sayin'....
Final note: accept no lame misguided remakes of "Point Blank"....including "Payback" with Mel Gibson and "Parker" with Jason Statham......Lee's the man here, even if that 93,000 remains forever elusive.......4 stars for "Point Blank" (****), still as bracing and thrilling as swimming in San Francisco Bay while bleeding heavily from gunshot wounds.....
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