Blank generation... Point Blank (1967)

Sometimes you watch a film through a prism of its own influence… here I could see the works of Steven Soderberg, Quentin Tarrantino and numerous others whilst I could also feel the influence of the contemporary European new wave of the earlier part of the decade.

Point Blank is startling from the off as your mind clicks off a constant stream of “ah, so that’s where that came froms…”  It’s so stylishly constructed by British director John Boorman – a modern-day noir that also manages social commentary and to question the nature of crime and criminals.

Lee Marvin

Boorman dislocates the temporal narrative, so that you’re never quite sure “when” things are happening. His characters are constantly thinking intensely of past events that led to the pivotal moments in the story and the director shows their thoughts as flashbacks that may only last a second but still serve to underlie their emotional condition and the film’s real intent.

Every action is linked to other actions and the leads are all caught up in the narrative momentum of lives lived in exhaustion and fear. This may even reflect the existential theatre of the period: Waiting for pay-off perhaps?
   

The tone is set in a breathless opening that sees lead character Walker (Lee Marvin) shot apparently dead at the end of a heist gone right. He is persuaded to hi-jack a regular mob cash exchange by his pal Mal Reese (John Vernon) who is in debt to organised crime and need to cover the cost or bust.

Mal pulls a drunken Walker to the floor and holds his head as close as he can in order to communicate his plan. It’s a strangely tender scene that mirrors later male and female positioning: these guys are close enough when they really need to communicate.

John Vernon, Lee Marvin and Sharon Acker

The job takes place at disused Alcatraz where Mal shoots dead the two men with the money – not part of the plan by Walker’s shock reaction – and then proceeds to trim down the team he is to share the loot with. In front of Walker’s distraught wife, Mal shoots his pal down just so he can take his $93,000.

Lynne (Sharon Acker) hadn’t seen this coming even though she has been sharing Mal’s bed for long enough: betrayal doubled or even tripled as Mal takes the jackpot.

Walker crawls into the sea

But, here’s the twist… Walker doesn’t die.

Boorman’s shaky, unsteady camera follows him as he gently falls into the sea, intent on swimming from the Rock to the shore. Walker has become almost inhuman but he is a man driven by the need to balance the books than simple revenge – perhaps that’s just his way of dealing with such compound treachery.

Next we see Walker on a tourist trip back to the former prison. Deep in his own thoughts we hear details of how so few men have ever escaped from Alcatraz and none of those were carrying bullet wounds. A man approaches Walker – Yost (Keenan Wynne), who appears to be a law officer intent on catching the mob funding Mel: he says he wants to help Walker as they have joint objectives. He gives him Mel’s address, a house he shares with Lynne…

Keenan Wynn and Lee

But as Walker smashes the door down in one brutal movement knocking his ex-wife senseless whilst pumping bullets into the bedroom, it becomes apparent that his adversary is no longer there.

Lynne is living a half-life – exhausted by guilt and Mel’s subsequent desertion. She’s like an animal waiting for the kill and her surprise at finding Walker alive is overcome by her expectation that she will – deservedly – die at his hands.

Walker and Lynne - ending and beginning

But, here’s the twist, Walker doesn’t kill her… she does that herself.

Walker looks out in emotionless despair to see Yost outside… time flows over weeks as he waits for one of Mel’s underlings to deliver Lynne’s monthly allowance. From him he follows a lead to a used car showroom run by the obsequious Stegman (Michael Strong). Walker smashes up one of Stegman’s cars with him in it – searching for a new lead.

Walker discusses Stegman's options

Turns out Mel may have been seeing Lynne’s sister Chris (Angie Dickinson) who runs a club downtown… Naturally it’s a trap and admits the realistically-sleazy bump and grind of the club, there’s a brutal, desperate and entirely believable bathroom battle between Walker and two of the hired hands. Marvin maybe shows some of his military training here – he fights dirty and effectively.

Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson

He finds Chris who is disgusted by the suggestion she has been Mel’s lover and only mildly surprised by her sister’s death: "…you were always the best thing about Lynne…” she tells Walker. Walker has only one thing on his mind and enlists her aid in getting to Mel.

But Mel will take some getting. By this stage we have met his paymaster, Frederick Carter (Lloyd Bochner), a businessman hidden in a room protected by layers of security: keeping the outside world from tainting his commercial reputation.

Middle and senior management

He helps set a trap for Walker by using Mel as bait: there are men all over the place and Mel is in the penthouse of an apartment building… surely there’s no way he can be reached?

But Walker has an ace to play: Mel was only ever after Lynne to get to her sister and will not refuse her request to visit… Chris smiles her way past the admiring guards whilst Walker sets off a distraction in a neighbouring apartment block.

Walker confronts Mel as Chris makes her get away...

As the police swarm around Mel’s protectors back off enough to allow Walker entry further and further into the building. It’s the kind of daring that you can believe – military moves and cold, calculation… like Michael Caine in Get Carter, Terrence Stamp in The Limey or Clint Eastwood in any one of two dozen films…

Walker finds Mel in bed with Chris who pushes him away with revulsion, her bravery rewarded. Mel is dragged out to his fate: as certain as Lynne of what Walker is capable of. But Walker only wants his $93,000. He’s not out for revenge just balance. So, when Mel tells him that the money is with his business bosses, Walker knows the only way to get to them is by disposing of Mel…

Next up is Walker, who offers sophistication that could undo Walker but he is rising to every challenge and, when it turns out that there are still further layers to unravel in search of redress, you know he will not be found wanting…

It’s a labyrinthine plot in true noire tradition, but the difference is that Walker is driven by his sense of honour: all he has left. It’s not really about the $93,000... he's just making a point to the mob and to himself.

Mr Lee Marvin

Lee Marvin is amazing in this role, a believable man of violence and yet with vulnerability that should be difficult to counterpoint this well. He even makes for a believable romantic lead not just in his early flashback encounters with Lynne but also as he and Chris are drawn together… filling the emptiness in each others' existence.

Angie Dickinson

Angie Dickinson is excellent as always… a fine actress with a great range who all too often got stuck in light comedy westerns or stuck as a beautiful adornment on the hero’s arm. Here she shows her own bravery as well as tenderness: her pity and passion mixed for her dead sister’s husband.

But the whole cast is uniformly on top form in what is deservedly regarded as something of a classic by one of the best British film-makers of his generation.

Point Blank is available from all good online retailers like Movie Mail as well as those with dodgy tax practices.

Dusty verdict: Recommended. Buy the DVD and you won’t be disappointed.

Old career in a new town... Brannigan (1975)

There are some films that just about scrape it onto this blog, there has to be something redeemable and a film vehicle for a near-seventy year old John Wayne has to be unlikely… and yet…

Brannigan is a British-made film that just about allows Duke Wayne to carry off a tough-guy role at 68. He’s helped by a great supporting cast as well as superb backdrops of London: another time-capsule film.

Directed by Douglas Hickox, Brannigan afforded Wayne the chance to ape the Clint Eastwood style (he had turned down Dirty Harry) and allows a fresh twist by transporting his unchanging cowboy act to Blighty: a horse-wrangler out of water as it were... There are repeated moments in the film which play on this from attempts to get Brannigan to not carry his gun and to follow native procedures. There’s also a nice running contest between the character and his British counterpart, Commander Sir Charles Swann (Richard Attenborough) which plays up every known cliché about the “special relationship”.

Richard Attenborough

Brannigan’s assigned liaison officer, Detective Sergeant Jennifer Thatcher (the lovely Judy Geeson) quotes her father in saying that there’s only three things wrong with “yanks”: “over-paid, over-sexed and over here…” But you know mutual respect won’t be far behind.

Judy Geeson and Duke

 It’s entertaining and undemanding fun and very well put together. There’s also a fine example of a hard-top e-type Jaguar and you can’t say further than that…

Lieutenant James Brannigan is a Chicago cop who has his own way of doing thing but (you guessed it…) he gets results. He’s tracking down one particularly nasty crime lord, Ben Larkin (John Vernon), who has been caught trying to flee to England. Somewhat against his will – and to the audience’s delight – Duke…sorry, Brannigan is sent to bring him back. Somehow we sense that it’s not going to be quite that simple… and the old dog’s unconventional methods will be all the more so in London Town…

Mel Ferrer and John Vernon

Brannigan arrives and is treated like a red-hot cinder by the locals as Swann and his number two, Insp. Michael Traven (John Stride – who was excellent in the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead I saw a few years later…in Manchester), struggle to reign him in. Miss Thatcher is altogether more understanding and there’s an under-current of fatherly affection between her and the old grump. But, where did they get that second name from? The “Milk Snatcher” was a shadow cabinet minister at the time…

Judy Geeson

Meanwhile the plot has really kicked in. A hit man is assigned to off Brannigan by Larkin’s team led by Mel Fields (Mel Ferrer) – he’s Gorman (Daniel Pilon) the nastiest in the business but at least he drives that e-type. Then Larkin is kidnapped from his health club by two Brit gangsters played by Charlie-the-Handle (James Booth) and Drexel (Del Henney) whose aim is to hold him to ransom.

James Booth and Del Henney keep watch

So now Brannigan has to help the Limeys save face as well as catch his man. The first attempt to snag the kidnappers fails as they extract the money from a drop in Piccadilly by drilling a hole beneath a post box.

But there are some lively police-procedurals as Brannigan and co set about scaring the truth out of the likes of Brian Glover and Tony Booth (Cherie’s dad) not to mention the far less threatening Tony Robinson – “look kids it’s Baldric!”, “Who?”, “Er… the guy out of Time Team!”, “Oh yeah…”

John Wayne and Tony Robinson

There’s also a classic bar brawl at a pub in Leadenhall Market in which Attenborough joins Wayne in slugging it out on that violent but harmless way of every good-humoured scrap since The Quiet Man: glassing with a smile and mutually respectful manliness all round.

Leadenhall Market shake-down

Then there’s a car chase which is very well executed and shows off some of the highlights of central London including Tower Bride over which the cars fly as the draw bridge lifts higher.

Jaguar E-Type on the attack

And, all the while Brannigan’s hit-man gets closer and closer to the kill, narrowly avoiding nailing Miss Thatcher as the dead-eyed cop reacts just in time to put him off.

The plot is well constructed as the main elements race to a satisfying conclusion as the double-crossing crosses over itself in the inevitable deserted offices of decaying docklands (probably now the home of gastro pubs and luxury flats).

Wayne still convinces and went on to make Rooster Coburn next, one of his better late period films. When I was younger I was less generous to his attempts to stay in the game but this was all he knew, from being an extra in silent films he worked for over 50 years in cinema.

Dusty verdict: Worth watching for the cars and the streets of 1974. There’s also a host of great British acting talent including cameos from Don Henderson and Lesley Anne Down. You can get the very reasonably-priced DVD here.

A couple of years later, The Squeeze showed a sleazier and more realistic side to London’s criminal classes, followed by others, but Brannigan helped keep the British crime flick alive at a time of struggle.

Lesley Anne Down

Brian Glover meets Duke