Point Blank

John Boorman's first American film and one of the most formally severe crime films of the 1960s. Walker is shot by his partner and his wife during a robbery and left for dead on Alcatraz. He lives. Then he comes back for his money: ninety-three thousand dollars. The amount is trivial and the film keeps saying so; the organisation he is facing works in millions and nobody understands why this man insists. The source is Richard Stark's Parker novel The Hunter. Boorman does not build the narrative straight: time jumps, sounds carry into the next scene, a single footstep runs for minutes, and the colour changes from scene to scene. Which is why the argument over whether Walker is alive at all, and whether everything is the last thought of a dying man, has run ever since. Lee Marvin plays Walker, Angie Dickinson his sister-in-law and John Vernon his partner. Marvin held unusual authority over the production and chose Boorman himself. An important work in the genre for anyone who likes 1960s American cinema and formal experiment. For a viewer expecting a straight revenge film the narrative is constantly interrupted and the ending explains nothing.