... and maybe that's ultimately why it failed at the box office in 1967. People generally got only one shot at the apple as far as viewing went before years passed and it got on TV. Now that you have continuous access to a film, whether via streaming or DVD, you can do back to back viewings and catch everything. 1967 was a good year for Lee Marvin at MGM, where he made two movies for the studio that have ended up in the 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, this one and The Dirty Dozen. John Boorman does some stylistically interesting things, but it's a bit too much, the flourishes calling too much attention to themselves and distracting from the story. He had become much more masterful at letting the visuals contribute to the advance of the story by the time he made Deliverance and Excalibur, IMO. These flashbacks Marvin/Walker kept having to events that had previously occurred in the movie - and in a movie that clocks in at under 95 minutes, at that - just seemed like overkill to me.I found the plot terribly confusing the first time around. The crooks were hiding out in Alcatraz, where regular tours are conducted? Heck, Marvin himself is shown on such a tour very early in the film. I had no concept of what Marvin's life was supposed to have been before the events of the movie. In the flashback where he met his wife, he appears to be a dockworker straight out of On the Waterfront. The bit where the future marrieds circle each other, locked in eye contact was kinda sexy, but the presence of all of Marvin's coworkers standing one inch away from them was weird. I also didn't understand the connection between Walker and Reese or what this incredibly crowded party was where they reunited or the other barroom scene where Reese knocks Walker to the floor and climbs on top of him to tell him how badly he needs money. These scenes didn't make sense to me at all, but they didn't ruin my overall enjoyment of the movie.I liked Carol O'Connor as the Nicest Guy in the Mob. Keenan Wynn's character I didn't get. He somehow finds Walker when no one else knows he's alive and recruits him in pursuing mutual interests. I thought for the whole movie until the final scene that he was some kind of law enforcement - a Fed, maybe. The ending is also vague, I suppose deliberately so. Wynn tells the Hired Gun to leave the bag with the money, so I guess Walker gets the money? Though we don't see it explicitly.Anyway, I just love the 60s look - the architecture, the cars, the hairstyles, the clothes. I loved the hamburger joint where Marvin and Dickinson ate with the giant windows. I loved her pad with the balcony that looked down on the living area. I loved O'Connor's sprawling retreat. I loved the technology! I guess mob millionaires had remote controls for their TVs in 1967 (Well, Jack Lemmon had one in The Apartment way back in 1960, and he was at best a middle-class schlub). Oh, yeah, I also dug O'Connor's primitive speaker phone, where he put the receiver in some kind of device so you suddenly had speaker phone.The thing I missed the most? The screenplay, in its attempt to be ultra-cool, neglects to provide wronged gangster Lee Marvin with the one ingredient that is indispensable to the sort villainous hero he specialized in, namely humor. This is one of the few Lee Marvin films that contains not one memorable zinger, delivered in that patented, guttural drawl of his. It's worth a look, but I can see why 1967 audiences didn't take to it, with only one viewing to "get it".

British director John Boorman based Point Blank on Donald Westlake's crime thriller The Hunter. It stars Lee Marvin as Walker and you certainly see his distinctive, staccato walk in the early part of the film.This is a hard boiled thriller with European sensibilities. Walker is shot and left for dead, betrayed by his criminal friend who also has an affair with his wife. They planned to steal mob money which was being dropped off at Alcatraz.Miraculously Walker recovers and he wants his share of the money and revenge. Once Walker topples his treacherous friend who also had a dalliance with Walker's sister in law (Angie Dickinson) he goes after the organisation for his $93,000.Now you would think that if this organisation were so smart they would just pay Walker the $93,000 and bid him farewell given that systematically he is taking them down one by one aided by a shadowy figure.The film is tightly and stylishly directed, plenty of angles and for the time some daring nudity. One person falls to his death naked. It also aged a bit, the night club scene with a James Brown type singer screeching is a typical 60s scenario of films wanting to be hip.This is one of Marvin's best roles. He is relentless in his doggish pursuit for revenge and his dialogue is pared down. The way some of the scenes have been framed we are unsure if what we are seeing is a memory of a dying man.Point Blank was remade as the much inferior Payback, starring Mel Gibson.

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

John Boorman's "Point Blank" is a classic crime film.It features Lee Marvin in a typically gripping turn as a criminal hell- bent on revenge, Angie Dickinson also perfectly cast as a femme fatale, and the first ever performance from John Vernon as a slippery turncoat criminal. Later, we are treated to Carroll O'Connor as a corporate fat cat whose business is crime. Those with sharp eyes will even spot Sid Haig as, what else, a henchman. Indeed, the movie is perfectly cast.It is also wonderfully shot and directed by Boorman. The hallmarks of New Hollywood in its nascent stage are here, and not just in the usual antiheroic main characters and pedestrian attitude to sex and violence. The movie also features startling directorial touches such as a set piece in a nightclub with a James Brown-esque singer, shouting "Ow!" onstage, the repeated sound drowning out the moans and groans of thugs battered backstage, who have a more typical reason to say "ow". Both parties are in turn drowned out, this time by blood-curdling screams, when a dancer discovers the broken bodies.The movie doesn't just show crime. It comments on it with real cleverness. Scenes like the above showcase the closeness of violence to other forms of expression. In another scene, Marvin's mononymous Walker talks to "Chris", his sister and law, also mononymous. Does he "want" you, Walker asks, hatching a plan to ensnare the turncoat played by John Vernon. He does. "I want *him*," Walker replies, and there is no homosexual subtext implied. The term "want" moved from the sexual to the violent in the space of a few breaths.You have to forgive the laughably unrealistic scene in which Vernon falls to his death on the limitations of film in 1967. The film is so well shot, using bright colours as well as it uses shadow, that you know this was the best they could have done. I love the final shot, the camera moving out to show Alcatraz, where the action began, the "hero" himself double-crossed and made to chase his tail, hardly getting anywhere from the movies ignominious beginning. And I loved the final twist.Point Blank is a classic.