Point Blank (1967)

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Did it ? I don't think it did. I might have found out if I'd listened to the director's commentary, with Soderbergh, but I couldn't be bothered. Maybe I'll take it in at some future time. Otherwise it was quite interesting, but terminally puzzling. It didn't hang together very well. More or less a permanent clash of personalities. Difficult to know why they were so cool with each other. Why did Angie try to batter Lee so furiously, with no effect ? Frankly, I needed more clarity. What exactly was it about ? Did Marvin collect his money ? Did he wind up as a part-owner boss of the mob ? Most of the rest of the cast were dead by the end. Similar to Bacon's opinion about his own paintings. Meaningless, unless you find meaning in them. One critic thinks that Marvin was actually dead throughout the entire movie.

After being double-crossed and left for dead, a mysterious man named Walker (Lee Marvin) single-mindedly tries to retrieve the rather inconsequential sum of money that was stolen from him.The plot summary, as well as some of the characters in the film, seem to think $93,000 is a trifle. While I maybe would not go so far as to kill for it, $93,000 would be a pretty big deal to me. And the inflation rate tells me that $93,000 in 1967 would be $692,425 today -- certainly not inconsequential at all! A person could live comfortably on that for a while.Regardless, the film works well because of Lee Marvin. He is a strong antihero, sort of a Charles Bronson type before Bronson really took off. Choosing between this and the Mel Gibson remake, this film is the clear winner.

Lee Marvin was great at not acting. In every movie, he stands there silently watching all the other actors until eventually he does something (usually very slowly). Rumor has it that Keanu Reeves studied his method religiously.Marvin plays a dead guy -- no, a dying guy -- no, a guy who almost died -- even the director said he didn't know and didn't care. Anyway, Marvin gets double-crossed by his buddy; so Marvin spends his time either bumbling his way into unintentional deaths or watching other people murder people. One highlight is when the hit-man is ordered to kill Marvin and instead kills the very guy who ordered the hit. The hit-man can pick off a moving target at great distance, but apparently he had trouble seeing Marvin pushing his boss out into the open and he had trouble seeing that his boss was not Marvin. Until later. Then he reported to the next higher boss that he killed his boss because he was there instead of Marvin. Good reasoning.And Angie is great at -- well, at being a model who gets a few lines. Her character learns that her sister just died due to Marvin scaring the holy heck out of her. So she leaves her sister to rot on the floor and goes off with Marvin. She gets to wear a few garish outfits and towards the end, for no apparent reason, she goes berserk on Marvin and then sleeps with him.The bad guys are a trip. "We don't have cash. We use checks. We can't get you your money. Only the accountant writes checks." That's what they keep telling Marvin, and apparently, it's not their concern whether Marvin kills them. They just know that they don't have cash.They threw out the script. They only liked the main character. I don't think they wrote a replacement script. I imagine each day on the set, they told Marvin to stand over there and don't say anything because that's mostly what he did.Marvin can't carry a movie. He can be great as a supporting character with his one-dimensional non-acting, but that's all. Dickinson certainly can't carry a movie. She is eye candy and nothing more. This is supposed to be an action movie, and she is the second lead playing against a guy who doesn't act, emote or move any facial muscles. That's much too much for her. She would be better as the second banana's love interest.Marvins stands and stares. Dickinson has boobs. The director had no script. That's about all.Strangely enough, because this was done like a rushed high school art project, people look for great meaning in its obvious deficiencies. No, it's not avant-garde or highly stylized. It's a bad or non-existent script with exceptionally bad editing. Is he dead? Is he alive? Is he dying? Nobody knows because (not to beat a dead horse) they didn't have a script.

A gangster is on a revenge missionStarring Lee Marvin and Angie DickinsonScreenplay by Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse and Rafe NewhouseDirected by Donald E WestlakeThis is a below average thriller with a disappointing ending.The whole thing is too artyfarty for it's own good and the constant use of pointless flashbacks does nothing to further the tension or plot. The acting throughout is as wooden as a park bench. The plot didn't really go anywhere and didn't keep my interest. The whole movie was just trying to be too arty and clever and that got in the way. I haven't watched many films from this era in the sixties so I don't really know if this was a common thing at the time.The ending left me frustrated and so did most of the film. I can't really find anything good to say about it at all.6/10