MovieChat Forums > Point Blank (1967) Discussion > So good on so many levels!

So good on so many levels!


Really amazing film, minimalistic, artsy, funny, violent, nihilistic, avant-garde and post-modern all at the same time! Really super impressed watching it for the 1st time in 2014; such a powerful experience.

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I agree with you, and it was perfectly cast, too. Every once in a while, on a rainy afternoon, I watch a double feature of ' Point Blank ' and ' Charley Varrick ' ( 1973 ). Have you seen Charley Varrick?

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I've not seen Charley Varrick but thanks for the recommendation :-)

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It's a pretty darn cool movie. Like the American Le Samourai.

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I like the movie a lot, but it's also a great time capsule of Los Angeles in 1967. It's things like the way psychedelic/hippie clothes are starting to become common, the way interior design is doing the same thing (the red carpet in Mal Reese's place nearly burned my retinas out), the look in the office where Walker goes to confront Carter etc.

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POINT BLANK is one of the best cinematic representations of that stark, sun-bleached, urban mood which dominated the mid-to-late-1960s but rarely gets referred to -- people talk about "protest" and "tumult" yet rarely refer to the almost post-apocalyptic zeitgeist of the era.

The atonal score, the claw-your-neck/angsty atmoshpere, that echo-chamber resonance, the diffused lighting, that window-screen camera trick, the jazz bar, those aloof neon lights at night, even that car lot.... it's all just sooooo very, very 1966/67...

Even down to the metaphorically-appropriate name of the film: in-your-face ("POINT") yet oddly hollow ("BLANK").

This is what the cities tended to feel like at that time. If you don't capture that distinctive "slum of a decade" vibe, you've missed part of what the late-'60s was about.

BTW: the DVD has two brief extras (both entitled "The Rock") which focus on Alcatraz Prison and also convey the same lost, disillusioned flavor of time which was so captivating yet confounding --- in fact, these two extras show you much MORE of Alcatraz than the movie itself winds up doing, so something must have been left on the cutting room floor.

--
LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA


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Yes, it's a great film. I was expecting a fun MARVIN action flick but was treated to a brilliant neo-noir masterpiece that is hyper-stylized, aesthetically stunning and shockingly thought-provoking. Truly one of the most impressive American films of the 1960s, which is saying quite a lot.

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