Criterion resurrects John Boorman and Lee Marvin’s liminal noir in all of its unearthly glory
“Cell. Prison cell. How did I get here?”
In John Boorman’s Point Blank, direct questions like these don’t come with easy answers, even if the film’s editing may cut to a scene or snippet of dialogue that suggests one. Walker (Lee Marvin) is likewise someone who speaks bluntly but reveals nothing. Once left for dead by his wife Lynne (Sharon Acker) and his best friend Mal (John Vernon) on Alcatraz Island after a heist gone wrong, Walker is seemingly resurrected from the same emotionless stone as the prison-turned-coffin around him–and blank-facedly tears through the sodium-lit underworld of Los Angeles in search of revenge. And, as he often reminds others, his $93,000 cut of the heist. Walker’s journey appears clean-cut as his pristine suits, the sharp-angled architecture of the modernist LA skyscrapers around him, or the Donald Westlake (under Richard Stark) novel that inspired Boorman’s film. Yet Point Blank is defined by stylistic flourishes that jar against such uniform expectation–a noir film not just shadowed by doubt and deception, but structurally haunted by liminality.
From frame one, we’re untethered from the no-nonsense heist film we believe will ground us. Walker, caught between life and death, escapes from Alcatraz in a combination of still shots and moving images; yet action doesn’t occur where we want–need–it to. Freeze-frames as Walker, climbing an iron walkway, is lit like a skeleton; Walker, scaling a barbed-wire fence, appears still–until ocean waves and errant seagulls reveal a world in motion around him. Despite having seemingly survived his murderous betrayal, he’s forgotten, like Alcatraz, just off the shores of a world already having mourned and moved on. A ghost out of sync with the world around him.
But we, too, are out of sync with him. Boorman elides time, place, and purpose freely, catching us as off-guard as a man of Walker’s stoic, unstoppable persistence has any right to be, yet still is. Actions that feel charged with dramatic purpose are often undercut by an uncomfortable delay, a beat perpetually missed. Walker’s early attempt to confront his friend-turned-nemesis Mal in a fiery bedroom ambush is rendered impotent–Mal abandoned that room months ago–yet the blunt reveal still catches Walker by sudden surprise. In one moment, the same bed contains Walker’s dead lover; in the next, it is stripped bare, containing nothing but a curious cat. Whose cat? Where did she go? How did no one notice Walker as the body was removed? How does Walker get to Los Angeles or refresh his suits, other than appearing in a seemingly endless, echoing tunnel under LAX? Boorman loves to raise these superficial questions only to nestle comfortably in the unsettling spaces between them, uprooting and recasting the shadows of film noir and LA crime fiction into the same umbral uncertainty as Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. Like those ghostly Gallic halls, past and present don’t follow each other so much as collapse into the same unresolvable moment, action perpetually suspended between beginning and end. Walker, walking to oblivion but forever caught in place.
The film’s relentless economy is an ecstatic action symphony between its director, star, and technical and creative teams, fueling Walker’s drive with bizarre and beautiful setpieces. There’s a brutal interrogation of a car salesman that marries the fistfights of Dragnet with, improbably, Death Proof; a trippy backstage brawl at a nightclub soaked in projections of microscopic chemical reactions set to the incoherent wails of the club’s lead singer; a stakeout sequence of endlessly moving glass elevators and rewired tourist telescopes broken to voyeuristically peer into high-rises instead of out to sea; a gunpoint confrontation that matches Walker’s .45 magnum with the unbothered yet obstinate verbal ratatat of Carroll O’Connor. With each scene, the pieces are all there for a straightforward sequence–yet each actor and action are approached with a dizzying, alien unfamiliarity, as if original intent has been amnesia’d away. It’s a film that propels itself into action as a way to reclaim a lost purpose, shielding itself from the existential horror of standing still.
It’s an ethos that drives even its quieter, reflective sequences–particularly in how it indulges in a fleeting romance with Angie Dickinson’s Chris that feels more oneiric than romantic. Like the action setpieces, these moments drift into the film with an emotional logic partially rooted in genre obligation: if there’s a guy, there must be a girl. But it’s fascinating how Boorman uses these obligatory anchors to drown us deeper into otherworldliness; namely, as a climactic love scene cycles through the film’s cast as partners (Chris as Lynne, Walker as Mal, and back again) rejecting who these characters are to each other in a collapse of identity and narrative function. There is only the breathtaking moment, how it feels to Walker and to us, with only the dreamlike sense of fulfilling what we feel must come without surrendering to the questions of who, how, or why. Such thoughts risk sending us back into a natural reality defined by an inevitable ending that comes–or maybe already has come–for us all.
It’s astonishing that such an experimental action film came at the height of a major studio’s powers–yet the special features on Criterion’s new release reveal how Point Blank was itself a threshold object, born of a Hollywood caught, like Walker, between what it had been and what it was about to become. Its star, a newly minted Oscar winner, placed all of his creative trust and commercial clout in a sophomore British director intrigued by stripping a typical crime thriller to the studs–and both conspired to shoot as little footage as possible to prevent further studio meddling. Coupled with the repeal of the Hays Code and the new ratings system not yet implemented, Point Blank enjoyed near free rein over what it wanted to show and how it showed it–and used that freedom to make a haunting ghost story wearing the sheets of a studio-funded action revenge thriller, attracting a devoted following from everyone ranging from Steven Soderbergh to Jim Jarmusch.
It’s a film that builds to a climax that, despite wearing the garb of a finale, remains caught in suspended animation. It ends where it began, on Alcatraz Island, as Walker helps achieve a revenge he’s already taken in service of someone else’s ambitions. The $93,000, the object Walker ritualistically claims he wants, sits out in the open, ready to be taken. But Walker remains, ever a ghost, in the shadows. As if knowing that to touch the object of his claimed desire is to bring an end to the hunt, to the dream, to the film itself. It’s touching matter and antimatter. Instead, he waits. We wait. Caught between states, light and shadow, anticipating action, purpose, continuance, ending and beginning.
Video/Audio
Criterion presents Point Blank in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, utilizing a new 4K restoration approved by director John Boorman created from the 35mm original camera negative as well as 35mm separation masters for some sections, with a 35mm Warner Bros. archival print used as a reference. The monaural audio track was remastered from the original magnetic audio track. SDH subtitles are provided for the feature film, as well as for the Boorman/Soderbergh commentary, the Boorman/Dyer interview, the Dick Cavett episode, and the theatrical trailer.
I was super excited to get my hands on this new disc precisely because of Boorman’s psychedelic use of color in this film, even as much of Point Blank takes place in decidedly clean-cut, “square” modern settings. Compared to the 2015 Warner Brothers Blu-ray, this new 4K restoration does lean slightly into the teal push in some scenes–but to me was only noticeable in scenes where such blues were already a prominent aspect of Boorman and Philip H. Lathrop’s shots. The diverse, multi-layered and color-coordinated fabrics–gaudy in 1967 as much as they are now–have a breathtaking depth and texture to them, brought to life with jaw-dropping fidelity. One standout shot features Lynne’s broken perfumes swirling en masse in a draining bathtub, a dizzyingly grotesque rainbow of color that easily puts any 4K TV through its paces.
The monaural audio track is wonderfully immersive, with vibrant yet implacable echoes for sound effects and dialogue that pointedly alternates between diegetic, looped, and voiceover. The cumulative effect is dramatically unsettling, untethering viewers from the color-shock “reality” of the film and placing them close to Walker’s aberrant, impenetrable psychology–and Boorman’s assured control as a director.
Special Features
Aside from the archival commentary present on both discs, all special features are located on the accompanying Blu-ray.
- Commentary: A 2005 archival commentary ported over from Warner Bros.’ original home video releases of Point Blank, featuring director John Boorman in conversation with filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. It’s a lively and engaging track that epitomizes the “film school in a box” nature of early disc releases, with both Soderbergh and Boorman nerding out over lens choices, optical effects, and other technical wizardry as much as Hollywood history, on set anecdotes, and careful dissection of translating Boorman’s vision into its surreal final form.
- Boorman & Dyer: A 2023 archival conversation between critic Geoff Dyer (who also provides the disc’s Essay) and director Boorman for the Borris House Festival of Writing & Ideas. Boorman discusses in deeper quality the film’s themes, the idea of the film as a death vision, getting away with Point Blank’s more overt visual and editing flourishes, and more.
- Harris: In this new interview conducted by Criterion in 2026, author Mark Harris discusses where Point Blank is situated in John Boorman’s career as a “situationalist” director–eschewing distinguishable auteur signatures in favor of crafting unique looks and tones for his films as a result of “problem-solving” the unique aspects of the stories that catch his interest. Harris also discusses the origins of Point Blank’s source novel and Donald Westlake’s Parker character, the trusting working relationship between new Oscar winner Lee Marvin and sophomore feature director Boorman, and the swirling cultural forces that helped give birth to Point Blank such as the elimination of the Hays Code and predating the formation of the formal MPAA ratings system.
- Jarmusch: In this new audio interview/video essay, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch discusses his love of Point Blank and how it stands out as an iconic example of Los Angeles film noir, particularly in the context of source material author Donald Westlake’s other crime fiction. Jarmusch also dives into Boorman’s experimental methods of capturing Walker’s shifting psychology through Point Blank’s colorful production design, layered cinematography, and elliptical editing.
- Martino: Writer and historian Alison Martino discusses the history of Point Blank’s real-life LA locations–highlighting their significance both in the film, in larger L.A. culture, and their fates in the decades since the film’s production. Highlights include the tunnels under LAX where Walker’s infamous “walking” montage was shot, as well as the towering Hollywood Hills mansions and downtown high rises used by the shadowy Organization.
- The Rock: A newly-restored two-part promotional featurette by MGM, documenting Point Blank’s historic shoot as the first film to use the recently-shuttered Alcatraz Penitentiary as a filming location. In addition to the mountains moved by production to turn the crumbling ruin into a habitable shooting location, the featurette also documents how LIFE Magazine capitalized on the endeavor to shoot a fashion spread using actresses Angie Dickinson and Sharon Acker.
- Marvin & Cavett: An archival October 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Lee Marvin joining the host to discuss his experiences in World War II as a combat marine, his early exposure to working in film while in combat, and the journey that led to winning an Oscar for his dual role in Cat Ballou.
- Trailer for Point Blank’s original theatrical release–which strikingly does its best to capture the film’s experimental style as something not just palatable but exciting to a larger commercial audience.
- Essay by Geoff Dyer that beautifully captures the fragmented, hallucinatory nature of Point Blank as a way of discussing the film’s surreal stylistic qualities, Boorman’s ambition in working with color film for the first time, the stripped down Pinteresque essentiality of Point Blank’s script, and the haunting nature of the film’s understated existentialist themes.
Point Blank is now available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
