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DVD Point Blank
Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and assisted by Angie Dickinson, as he desperately searches for someone, anyone, who can just give him his money. But if Walker is an extreme incarnation of the revenge-driven noir antihero, the modern syndicate has been transformed into a world of paper jungles and corporate businessmen, an alienating concept to the two-fisted, gun-wielding gangster. Boorman creates a hard, austere look for the film and fragments the story with flashes of painful memory, grafting the New Wave onto old genres with confidence and style. Haunting and brutal, Point Blank remains one of the most distinctive crime thrillers ever made. --Sean Axmaker
John Boorman's "Point Blank" is a crime drama classic, with a tough guy as the hero bent on revenge (Lee Marvin playing rough and tumble Walker), beautiful women (at the time Angie Dickinson), and bad guys (Carroll O'Connor and John Vernon) who are the target of Walker's wrath. The idea is that Reece (Vernon) stole Walker's half of a heist to pay off the mob he was in debt with, and now Walker wants it back. If the lpot sounds familier it is because Mel Gibson's revenge comedy "Payback" is "Point Blank's" remake (and both were based on the book "The Hunter" by Richard Stark). But what hurts this movie is that it is told in a dream-like non-linier editing, and so sometimes you don't know what order events happen, and sometimes you wonder if Walker is just dreaming the whole thing. The acting is good. Lee Marvin can play this role in his sleep. Dickinson is alright as the dame, and Vernon and O'Connor are decent in their slezzy roles. The problem I had was the editing and narrative. I realize that "Pulp Fiction" was probably modeled somewhat on this technique, but I still didn't like it here. Sometimes the story just didn't since. It is still a good movie and shows the promise of Boorman and a break with traditional story narrative.
Nice vehicle for Marvin
Taciturn tough guy Lee Marvin playing career criminal Walker speaks volumes with his silence and scowls in the 1967 psychedelic era action thiller "Point Blank". Double crossed, shot and left for dead in the desolete Alcatraz prison during a heist by his unfaithful wife and best friend Mal Reese played by John Vernon, he somehow survives.
Resurrected he endeavors to recover the $93,000 that was his share of the Alcatraz robbery. Vernon it seems was indebted to an organization to the tune of $150,000. The organization spearheaded by suave Lloyd Bochner and the earthy Carroll O'Connor maintains a fortress like apartment complex in Los Angeles with Vernon ensconced in it's penthouse.
Aided by sister in law the sexy Angie Dickinson, Marvin savagely battles his way up the hierarchy of the organization to get his money which they are reluctant to give up. He gets tipped off to the wherabouts of the heads of the organization by lawman Yost played by Keenan Wynn.
Director John Boorman crafts a modern day taut film noir type thriller which is sleek and streamlined and effectively utilizes the tenacious personna of Lee Marvin.
film noir art flick
Lee Marvin is a one man wrecking crew who wants his money from the double crossers who left him for dead. Very stylish and mysterious. Great visual storytelling from director Boorman, great bad-ass performance from Marvin as the living embodiment of vengeance.
Prime Cut is a strangely likeable if decidedly oddball thriller from 1972. A happy collision of gangster genre grit (validated by Lee Marvin's granite-faced lead performance) with a strain of shameless (though shrewd) exploitation not unfamiliar to screenwriter Robert Dillon (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes), plus the kinetic, semi-documentary wit of director Michael Ritchie (The Candidate) makes Prime Cut both a straightforward noir and a satire of itself. Marvin plays Nick, an aging enforcer for the Chicago mob, sent to Kansas City to deal with a ruthless cattle baron (Gene Hackman) who owes a half-million to Windy City racketeers. Hackman's character (inexplicably named Mary Ann), dismissive of old-guard crime chieftains, has set up his own heartland empire... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Gene Hackman - Sissy Spacek Director(s): Michael Ritchie DVD Release Date: Released the 14 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This vastly underrated Arthur Penn film from the mid-1970s ranks as one of the era's nastiest and most fascinating pieces of business, a detective story that shuttles back and forth between Hollywood and the Florida Keys, with a plot nearly as complex as Chinatown. Gene Hackman stars as a tired, aging private eye who, as a favor to a friend, agrees to track down a runaway teen. But the case turns out to be something much larger: a smuggling ring of Mayan antiquities. The human impulses get darker and darker and Hackman's character gets pulled in deeper and deeper, even as his own life is falling apart. Ultimately, in one of his best and most unsung performances, Hackman winds up hurting the people he is trying to help. A great cast includes Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, a young... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Hackman - Jennifer Warren Director(s): Arthur Penn DVD Release Date: Released the 12 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Sam Peckinpah knew he couldn't call a movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and get away with it. That's why he did it. When he undertook this nakedly personal project, in self-exile in Mexico, the director was a deeply bitter man out of favor with critics, the media, and the Hollywood establishment, which had just released his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid in a mutilated version. "Bring Me the Head..." sounded like the parody title of an ultraviolent Sam Peckinpah movie, and he flung it in our faces just as his onscreen surrogate tosses the titular object at the camera.
Thing is, the movie is a masterpiece--raw, shocking, beautiful, and brave--in which Peckinpah confronts his enemies and his own demons. Warren Oates plays a gringo piano-player stuck in Mexico who... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Warren Oates - Isela Vega Director(s): Sam Peckinpah DVD Release Date: Released the 22 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Film noir is such a rich cinematic zone that second-tier specimens compel nearly as much fascination as the classics. At a glance, Volume 2 of Warner Bros.' (ever-expanding, we hope) Film Noir Collection is a distinct step down from Volume 1--inevitable when you've launched your series with five landmark titles, including three outright noir masterpieces (The Asphalt Jungle, Gun Crazy, Out of the Past). But linger beyond that first glance, because the second set is a flavorful mix of sleazoid iconography (two vehicles for B-movie bad boy Lawrence Tierney), an offbeat outing for a major director (Fritz Lang in his Howard Hughes RKO period), Poverty Row production circumstances that encourage aggressively peculiar, verging-on-radical filmmaking (the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claire Trevor DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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