Influenced by the irreverence, the creativity and the spontaneity of A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester, 1964), which starred the Beatles, Catch Us If You Can features the Dave Clark Five, another popular British group of the time. John Boorman began his career making television documentaries for the BBC in London, before directing his first feature film Catch Us If You Can in 1965 (the film was re-titled Having a Wild Weekend in the US). He has directed a number of other notable films, both in Hollywood and Britain including, Hell in the Pacific (1968), Deliverance (1972), Hope and Glory (1979), Excalibur (1981) and The General (1998). In the years since Point Blank, John Boorman has had a substantial career. While Payback intensives the violence, it has a straightforward revenge narrative, and lacks the cinematic virtuosity, as well as the dreamlike fractured narrative quality of Boorman’s original version. Indeed, Point Blank was re-made as Payback (Brian Helgeland, 1999) starring actor and director Mel Gibson. The film has attained a significant cult status among discerning cinema audiences, as well as capturing the attention of other filmmakers.

However, over the years, the influence and the reputation of Point Blank has continued to grow. With it’s fractured, disorientating dreamlike narrative structure, the film never really caught on with audiences at the time. Moreover, Point Blank was not a box office success when it was originally released in 1967. Westlake), Point Blank is a very courageous, ambitious and experimental film, particularly for a young (34 year old) director with no prior experience in Hollywood. An adaptation of a hardboiled crime novel called The Hunter, written in 1962 by Richard Stark (a pseudonym for the author Donald E. Point Blank was British director John Boorman’s debut feature film in Hollywood. Point Blank utilizes a dizzying of innovative visual, editing and sound techniques, as well as a fractured and disorientating narrative structure, all of which reinforce the notion of a blurring between dream and reality.Īlive? Sleeping? Dying? Dreaming? All of the above? A dying dream experienced by Walker, from the moment he is shot by Reece at the beginning of Point Blank and left to die in a dank prison cell at Alcatraz, until the final frame of the film. On another level, Point Blank can be interpreted as the dream of a dying man. On closer viewing, however, Point Blank possesses a surreal disorientating dreamlike quality. On one level, Point Blank can be viewed as a straightforward story about betrayal, vengeance and greed. He also wants to retrieve the $93,000 he is owed from the robbery.

Seemingly recovered, Walker rampages through the remainder of the film seeking revenge for the betrayal of his friend and his wife. Yet Walker somehow manages to survive the gunshot wounds. He also takes Walker’s wife Lynne (Sharon Acker).

Reece then takes Walker’s share of the robbery money ($93,000). Reece shoots Walker at point blank range, leaving him for dead, convulsing in the corner of one of the prison cells. Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967) is a crime film that centres on Walker (Lee Marvin), a violent criminal who seeks vengeance when his friend and partner in crime Mal Reece (John Vernon in his first feature film role) double-crosses him after a robbery at the old disused prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. The Art Of Dying: Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)īy Peter Wilshire Volume 17, Issue 4 / April 2013 21 minutes (5024 words)

Point blank kills cold war