Seen On The Big Screen (BFI Southbank): Point Blank, Directed by John Boorman (1967)



From allmovie by Rovi: "John Boorman's Point Blank was one of the most interesting and quietly influential films of late 1960s American cinema. Unashamedly violent, void of morality, and full of "European" experimentation, the film ignored the conventions of typical Hollywood crime thrillers. Compared to the stark grimness of typical crime movies, Point Blank was downright phantasmagoric in its narrative structure, camera placement, color schemes, and sounds. Released just three weeks after the similarly revolutionary Bonnie and Clyde, the film was not an immediate hit with audiences; even though star Lee Marvin was coming off the successful The Dirty Dozen, the film got swept up in the "violence-in-movies" controversy. Where Warren Beatty's Clyde and Faye Dunaway's Bonnie were sympathetic and glamorous, Marvin seemed capable of "bashing somebody's brains out," to paraphrase his famous line from The Dirty Dozen. But the actor's icy menace and Boorman's artistic pretensions have gone on to influence filmmakers to come, most notably Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and Quentin Tarantino."