Point Blank 4K 1967 Ultra HD 2160p

Mal Reese is in a real bind--owing a good deal of money to his organized crime bosses--and gets his friend Walker to join him in a heist. It goes off without a hitch, but when Reese realizes the take isn't as large as he had hoped, he kills Walker--or so he thinks. Some time later, Walker decides it's time to get his share of the money and starts with his ex-wife Lynne, who took up with Reese after the shooting. That leads him on a trail--to his wife's sister Chris, to Reese himself, then onto Big Stegman, then Frederick Carter, then up the line of gangsters in an effort to get money from people who simply won't acknowledge that they owe him anything.

User Review

The 1930s and 1960s in America were the heyday of noir book series. Cheap paperbacks with colorful covers and titles spat out through clenched teeth—always concise, implying betrayal, murder, conspiracy, and other hallmarks of a hard-boiled detective novel. Pulp crime fiction, printed on cheap paper. Paperbacks. Masterpieces and cheap, hackneyed works, all lumped together on the same bookshelf. In this literary flood, to stand out even slightly from the crowd of their peers, a story needed a strong central element that would grab the reader by the collar. And that central element was the main character. Parker, Grofield, Walker, Porter, Stranger—nameless men, but their surnames were more than enough.

Of course, Walker had his bad days. But he had never once had to greet dawn in a deserted Alcatraz with extra lead in his body. And it all started so trivially. “You’re my only friend,” “it’ll be an easy job,” “we’ll split the money evenly.” Now these phrases cut deep into his clouded consciousness. However, Walker was owed more than just $93,000. His so-called friend got a cushy spot in a mysterious and powerful Organization—and Walker’s wife to boot. Well, that’s enough to rise from the dead two years later and claim his rightful share.

John Boorman’s *Point Blank* is the first attempt to adapt the novella *The Hunter* by Donald Westlake, who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark. The second adaptation is by Brian Helgeland and John Muir (*Payback* starring Mel Gibson). Taking the popular detective story as his basis, Burman placed the quite charismatic Lee Marvin at its center—a man you begin to genuinely sympathize with from the very first frames. And this runs counter to Westlake’s characters, who evoked delight and hatred, but certainly not sympathy (“I have no heroes. They’re just characters,” Westlake himself claimed). And this is far from the only unique directorial vision in *The Hunter*. The very fabric of the story has undergone significant changes. No, the murders are still here, the beautiful woman capable of both betraying and saving is present, the false friends and nameless employers are still there, but as for time and reality…
Sudden, unmotivated flashbacks, popping up at the most inopportune moments and resembling strange, unhealing wounds, most closely resemble a botched edit. A murder in a club, taking place amid the swinger-style cries of a Black singer, is accompanied by an infernal sequence of background installations, as if straight out of Lynch’s pen. The film’s open ending, unnecessary questions, after the clear full stop of the final words. A film with such choices simply could not have been met with enthusiasm by critics and audiences, and thus flopped spectacularly at the box office. Which did not prevent it from sparking a wave of renewed interest in film noir (or, more accurately, neo-noir) and achieving cult status a couple of years later.

Walker is neither a hero nor an antihero, neither a man nor a dead man. Walker is the personification of vengeance. The craziest thing you could ever do in your life is to stand in his way. He is a man of few words; the only phrase he uses when meeting new faces from the Corporation is: “You owe me 93,000.” He isn’t one for flashy moves; his strikes are short, he acts only with certainty, and rarely looks at his victims. One gets the distinct impression that Lady Luck once owed this hulk a great deal, and so now she invisibly follows him into every corner of the city’s office hell. Not a single misstep—everything goes according to plan. Lee Marvin, incidentally, a recipient of the Purple Heart for combat operations, perfectly embodied one of the classic archetypes of the silent assassin on screen. Sullen, unfeeling, intimidating, deadly, marching resolutely toward his goal.

There’s a feeling that’s the opposite of déjà vu. It’s called déjà-vu. It’s when you constantly run into the same people, visit the same places, but every time it feels like the first time. Walker had been to this bar more than once. He had broken into the penthouses of his so-called friends on the upper floors more than once. He had committed hundreds of murders to the sound of blaring jazz. It’s just that right now, his memory is playing cruel tricks on him. Has this happened hundreds of times, or is it yet to come? He’s only about to be resurrected in two years, walk through old haunts, meet his wife and her sister, decapitate the Corporation, and vanish once more into the shadows of Alcatraz, never having taken the money he earned. It doesn’t take much to do that. Just survive the dawn in the deserted fortress and ignore the extra lead in his body. True, there have been worse days.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (94.1 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1

Info Audio

#English: FLAC 1.0
#English: Dolby Digital 1.0 (Commentary by director John Boorman and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (2005))

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