Point Blank is a 1967 American crime film directed by John Boorman and starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, adapted from the noir crime pulp novel The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark. Boorman directed the film at Marvin's request and Marvin played a central role in the film's development and staging. The film was not a box office success in 1967 but has since gone on to become a cult classic, eliciting praise from such critics as film historian David Thomson.
Walker (Lee Marvin) works together with his friend Mal Reese (John Vernon in his first major role) to steal a large amount of cash from a courier transporting funds for a major gambling operation, with the deserted Alcatraz island as a drop point. Reese then double-crosses Walker by shooting him, leaving him for dead. Reese also makes off with Walker's wife Lynne (Sharon Acker).
Walker recovers. With assistance from the mysterious Yost (Keenan Wynn), who seems to know everything about everybody, Walker sets out to find Reese, take his revenge and recover the $93,000 he is owed. Reese used all of the money from the job to pay back a debt to a crime syndicate called "The Organization" and get back in its good graces.
With memories of happy times together, Walker goes to Los Angeles to pay back his wife and his best friend for their treachery. He bursts in on Lynne and riddles her bed with bullets, just in case Reese is in it. A distraught Lynne tells him she no longer wants to live, then takes an overdose of pills.
Walker is told that a car dealer named Stegman (Michael Strong) might know where Reese can be found. He takes Stegman for a wild ride in one of his new cars, smashing the car and terrorizing him until Stegman reveals where Reese is living. He is told that Reese has now taken up with Walker's sister-in-law, Chris.
Breaking in on Chris (Angie Dickinson), he learns that she actually despises Reese and had considered Walker the best thing ever to happen to her sister. Willing to help in any way, Chris agrees to a sexual tryst with Reese inside his heavily guarded penthouse apartment just so she can gain access and unbolt a door for Walker. Walker ties up some men in an apartment across from the penthouse and has a call made to police to report a robbery, creating a diversion that enables him to slip into the penthouse.
With a gun to Reese's head, Walker persuades him to give up the names of his organization superiors – Carter, Brewster and Fairfax – so that he can make somebody pay back his $93,000. He then forces a naked Reese off the balcony and watches him plunge to his death.
After next confronting Carter (Lloyd Bochner) for his money, Walker is set up. A hit man (James B. Sikking) with a high-powered rifle is assigned to kill him at a money drop in a storm-drain river bed. Walker sees to it that Carter and Stegman are the ones who get shot.
Yost takes him to a home belonging to Brewster (Carroll O'Connor). Walker visits Chris in her apartment, which has been trashed by the organization. He takes her to the home belonging to Brewster. Walker waits for Brewster to return there. Chris makes love with Walker after first fighting with him. The following morning, Brewster comes home and is ambushed by Walker, who demands his money. Brewster insists that no one will pay. Walker says that if Brewster won't pay, he will kill him and try Fairfax next. Brewster explains that he is about to have Fairfax eliminated in order to take his place, and that he will get Walker the money after all.
They return to Alcatraz, which is still a drop. Brewster brings a case in which he claims to have the money. Walker doesn't trust him and refuses to show himself. The hit man is also in the darkness with his rifle. Brewster is shot. It is Yost who emerges from the shadows, whereupon Brewster calls out to Walker: "This is Fairfax! Kill him!"
Yost/Fairfax thanks Walker – still hiding in the darkness – for eliminating his dangerous underlings and offers him an enforcer job, claiming he has looked for a man like him for years. Walker remains silent and does not bother collecting the money.
Point Blank combines elements of film noir with stylistic touches of the European nouvelle vague. The film features a fractured time-line, disconcerting narrative rhythms (long slow passages contrasted with sudden outbursts of violence) and a carefully calculated use of film space (stylized compositions of concrete riverbeds, sweeping bridges, empty prison cells).[12] Boorman credits Marvin with coming up with a lot of the visual metaphors in the film.[2] Boorman said that as the film progressed, scenes in the film would be filmed monochromatically around one particular color (the chilly blues and grays of Acker's apartment, Dickinson's butter yellow bathrobe, the startling red wall in Vernon's penthouse) to give the proceedings a "sort of unreality".[2][12]
To establish Walker's mythic stature, Soderbergh noted in the commentary that the film cuts from a shot of Walker swimming from Alcatraz to a shot of him on a ferry overlooking the same island while a woman on the loudspeaker describes the impossibility of leaving the island. Soderbergh said that this contrast of the character's ease of escape with the loudspeaker's monologue makes the Walker character "mythic immediately."[
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