POINT BLANK (1967)

At a crowded dance party, hot-headed low-level crook Reese (John Vernon) wrestles his buddy Walker (Lee Marvin) to the ground, then climbs on top of him, practically dry-humping him, and begs him to help out with one last heist in which they will make off with a big bag of money being delivered by helicopter to the abandoned Alcatraz prison. On the island, Reese kills the couriers then double crosses Walker by shooting him and leaving him for dead, taking off with Walker's wife Lynne. But a year later, Walker shows up in San Francisco, intent on getting his share of the stolen money. A man named Yost (Keenan Wynn), who seems to be a government agent anxious to get his hands on Reese, gives Walker the address of his ex-wife who is living with Reese; when Walker gets there, he shoots up their bedroom before realizing that Reese is long gone, and Lynne is almost comatose with depression. Walker eventually makes contact with a series of folks with connections to Reese (and with Reese's bosses who are not traditional gangsters but supposedly respectable wealthy businessmen); most importantly, he winds sleeping with Chris (Angie Dickinson, pictured with Marvin), his sister-in-law, though no emotional connection can stop him from going after the money he's owed.

In its day, the neo-noir directed by John Boorman (Deliverance, Excalibur) had a reputation as hip and new-wavish, mostly for its fractured timeline and its postmodern approach to narrative and visuals. At its heart, it's a straightforward story of betrayal and revenge, based on a traditional crime novel by prolific author Donald Westlake who wrote several more books with Walker as the main character. But as was happening in the late 60s, style was becoming more important than substance, and this has style to burn. Scenes of people getting shot or attacked (or dry-humped) are jaggedly repeated, often in slow-motion. Quick flashbacks of previous scenes pop up throughout. A shot of spilled perfumes and tonics in a bathroom sink is downright psychedelic. A physical fight between Marvin and Dickinson suddenly turns into a shot of them making love. Marvin walks into a kitchen in which every appliance is running at full tilt. But the story is another matter. There are gigantic plot holes and gaps in logic; in some reviewers' minds, the biggest plot problem is whether or not Walker is actually alive or perhaps a ghost. One viewer posits an "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" explanation for narrative problems: the whole movie is just a moment-of-death dream that Walker has. For myself, I had no problem believing that Walker was not fatally shot--the shooting, though it does take place at close to point-blank range, is not shown clearly and we see no obvious sign of a fatal wound. My bigger problem is that plotpoint connections are blurred or erased, so the movie is a series of episodes, almost in the style of a graphic novel. Marvin and Dickinson are good, as are John Vernon, Michael Strong (as a car salesman), and Carroll O'Connor (as a high-level bad guy). Worth seeing for sure, if only as a mid-60s period piece, or as a signpost to a new Hollywood style that didn't last long. [TCM]