Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

deram-77963 I noticed the same theme and names are used as Mel Gibson's Payback

stevielanding Lee Marvin was great at not acting. In every movie, he stands there silently watching all the other actors until eventually he does something (usually very slowly). Rumor has it that Keanu Reeves studied his method religiously.Marvin plays a dead guy -- no, a dying guy -- no, a guy who almost died -- even the director said he didn't know and didn't care. Anyway, Marvin gets double-crossed by his buddy; so Marvin spends his time either bumbling his way into unintentional deaths or watching other people murder people. One highlight is when the hit-man is ordered to kill Marvin and instead kills the very guy who ordered the hit. The hit-man can pick off a moving target at great distance, but apparently he had trouble seeing Marvin pushing his boss out into the open and he had trouble seeing that his boss was not Marvin. Until later. Then he reported to the next higher boss that he killed his boss because he was there instead of Marvin. Good reasoning.And Angie is great at -- well, at being a model who gets a few lines. Her character learns that her sister just died due to Marvin scaring the holy heck out of her. So she leaves her sister to rot on the floor and goes off with Marvin. She gets to wear a few garish outfits and towards the end, for no apparent reason, she goes berserk on Marvin and then sleeps with him.The bad guys are a trip. "We don't have cash. We use checks. We can't get you your money. Only the accountant writes checks." That's what they keep telling Marvin, and apparently, it's not their concern whether Marvin kills them. They just know that they don't have cash.They threw out the script. They only liked the main character. I don't think they wrote a replacement script. I imagine each day on the set, they told Marvin to stand over there and don't say anything because that's mostly what he did.Marvin can't carry a movie. He can be great as a supporting character with his one-dimensional non-acting, but that's all. Dickinson certainly can't carry a movie. She is eye candy and nothing more. This is supposed to be an action movie, and she is the second lead playing against a guy who doesn't act, emote or move any facial muscles. That's much too much for her. She would be better as the second banana's love interest.Marvins stands and stares. Dickinson has boobs. The director had no script. That's about all.Strangely enough, because this was done like a rushed high school art project, people look for great meaning in its obvious deficiencies. No, it's not avant-garde or highly stylized. It's a bad or non-existent script with exceptionally bad editing. Is he dead? Is he alive? Is he dying? Nobody knows because (not to beat a dead horse) they didn't have a script.

writers_reign This was one of several films released at a time when English Directors were shooting not only in Hollywood but working in distinctly US genres not normally associated with roast beef and two veg and as such it is no better or no worse than any of the others. Like many prolific authors associated with one genre Donald E. Westlake, who had made both a name and a young fortune out of light-hearted crime novels, thought he'd try the real thing and created a second persona under which he published a much smaller output including Point Blank in which an ultra 'hard' man, left for dead, recovers and possibly mistaking himself for Richard, Duke of York, works his way up the hierarchy of the 'organisation', offing them systematically until he reaches the top. This is, of course, the kind of role that Lee Marvin can phone in and he brings it off to a fare-thee- well leaving the undemanding entertained with it.

Bill Slocum Lee Marvin was a quintessential man of action in 1960s cinema, always acting, never explaining. While he enjoyed a run of good films and an Oscar for one that wasn't, this remains his finest hour-and-a-half on film.Marvin is Walker, a man with no first name and a burning desire for getting back $93,000 stolen from him by his faithless wife and his false friend, Reese (John Vernon). As if by magic, a mystery man named Yost (Keenan Wynn) materializes to offer him a shot at the money...and revenge. Reese is now a part of something called the Organization, and Yost wants Walker's help bringing Reese down."You want Reese, and I want the Organization, you understand," Yost explains. "I'm going to help you and you're going to help me."Marvin's spare approach to acting was never on better display than it is here. His face is granite inexpressiveness, but he never stops until he gets what he is after. The result is a grimly satisfying piece of pure cinema expertly directed by John Boorman and drawing from Marvin's own real-life combat experience. Walker's walking wounded, but never shows pain or much of anything else except when it helps him get what he's after.The riddle of "Point Blank" rests in who Walker really is; the film is designed magnificently to keep you guessing. Normal human interaction is played at a curious minimum. Walker doesn't even ask questions when he confronts his wife, she simply talks in a monotone while he stares into space. Later, confronting a messenger, he just repeats whatever the fellow blurts out. For about ten minutes, from the time he meets Yost to the reunion with his wife, Walker doesn't speak at all. We just hear his footsteps echoing down an endless corridor.Is he a ghost? Is he having a vision, perhaps in a dying dream? It's hard to say, and people have had a field day guessing about it. He appears and disappears in elevators and parking garages seemingly at will. Everyone he meets says they thought he was dead. He doesn't even kill anyone directly, except perhaps one death which Walker operates with the help of a bedsheet, something we associate with ghosts. The bedsheet even blows up and covers Walker at the climactic moment.I'm still not sure what Walker is, but I enjoy watching Marvin make me guess. He doesn't even seem bothered when his sister-in-law Chris (Angie Dickinson) batters him with his hands for a couple of minutes, though her tagging him with a pool cue does get his attention for a little while. Mostly he just moves and watches, self-contained.He gets off a couple of funny lines, too, though you have to pay attention. At one point, Chris asks him why he brought her along for a meeting with a top Organization guy. "I thought you'd be safer with me than you would be by yourself," he answers. We have seen a lot of people by this point in the film who would have been much safer by themselves.Occasionally "Point Blank's" arid tone and zen vibe are bothersome elements, and there's a scene in a modern home (actually the same pad the Beatles hung out in when they visited Los Angeles) where Chris and Walker seem a bit too caught up in the movie's farther-out elements. But mostly this is a very involving and crafty movie, with a left- field ending that sticks.The film's unique style and rapid pace make for the kind of entertainment that is completely of its time and yet timeless, too. The same can be said for Lee Marvin, the hard-living man who left us this study of a man too hard for his own good.