Film

Point Blank

Name: Point Blank
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Drama
Released: 1967
Cast: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Vernon, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O'Connor

Crime
Very dark

Point Blank is less thriller than tone poem: Lee Marvin plays an almost mute wall of a man cutting through 1960s LA's crime syndicate to retrieve a laughably small sum of stolen cash. John Boorman fractures time, drowns dialogue in silence, and shoots violence as cool geometry. It's for viewers who want mood, formal daring and existential dread over plot logic or warmth.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love lean, mean revenge stories told with cold style, where the camera, the editing and a hard-faced lead do more talking than the dialogue does.

Skip it if you want warmth, a clear emotional arc or characters you can settle in with, since this one keeps its people at arm's length and its plot deliberately fragmented.

What it asks of you: It runs about ninety-two minutes but feels stranger than that, asking you to piece things together as it jumps around and to stay with a bleak, unblinking tone throughout.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Get Carter1971

Michael Caine plays the coldest, most efficient version of himself, a hitman tearing through Newcastle's underworld for his brother's killer. It's Britain's answer to Walker's blank fury, shot with the same unsentimental, procedural violence.

But The regional slang and grim 1970s Newcastle setting can feel dated and hard to parse for outsiders.

The Limey1999

Soderbergh openly borrowed Point Blank's fractured editing for this Terence Stamp vehicle, another aging hardman cutting through LA to avenge a death, with memory and time bending under grief and rage.

But The nonlinear structure can feel like a stylistic exercise more than a story, and the pacing drags for some.

Le Samouraï1967

Released the same year, Melville's Parisian hitman thriller shares Point Blank's obsession with ritual, silence and a protagonist who moves through the world like a ghost bound by his own code.

But Almost nothing happens for long stretches; if you need constant plot momentum this will feel glacial.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Point Blank

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Kiss Me Deadly1955

Point Blank's cold, near-mythic antihero and bleak view of violence-as-currency trace directly back to this film — Boorman openly drew from its nihilism and shattered structure.

This atomic-age noir got there first: a brutal, near-fascist private eye smashing through LA's underworld for a box that turns out to be world-ending. Same nihilism, same fractured moral compass, twelve years earlier.

But The Cold War paranoia and clipped 1950s dialogue date it hard, and Mike Hammer is even less likable than Walker.

Payback1999

A second adaptation of the very same pulp novel that inspired Point Blank, with Mel Gibson taking the same wronged-thief role and playing it meaner, funnier and far more talkative.

But It trades Boorman's cool ambiguity for glossy, wisecracking 90s action polish, which purists find a betrayal.

Drive2011

Ryan Gosling's near-silent getaway driver channels the same implacable, violence-as-craft energy as Walker, wrapped in neon synth-pop instead of jazz and sun-bleached concrete.

But The style-over-substance approach and sudden bursts of graphic violence turn some viewers off completely.

No Country for Old Men2007

The Coens' desert noir offers another unstoppable force moving through a morally exhausted landscape, chasing money that was never really the point, with the same dread-soaked stillness.

But It's bleaker and more ambiguous than Point Blank, with an ending that frustrates viewers wanting resolution.

John Wick2014

If you loved the idea of one man's singular, unstoppable pursuit but want it turned into pure kinetic spectacle, this is the mainstream, maximalist descendant, all choreography and neon.

But It has none of Point Blank's cool restraint or ambiguity — it's loud, cartoonish, and proudly so.

The Killing1956

Kubrick's early heist noir shares Point Blank's fractured chronology and clinical detachment, following a plan that unravels through betrayal and bad timing, told with icy narrative control.

But The clipped dialogue and voiceover narration feel much more old-fashioned than Boorman's cinema.

Collateral2004

Michael Mann's LA-at-night thriller gives you another lethal professional moving through a city rendered as pure atmosphere, all cool blues and existential menace.

But It's more of a two-hander thriller than a character study, so the introspection Point Blank offers is largely absent.

Ride Lonesome1959

Same engine, different costume: a single-minded man crossing hostile territory to settle a debt that isn't really about the money. Boetticher's westerns are the genre Boorman's crime thriller is secretly remaking.

Randolph Scott rides across a bare, sun-blasted landscape hunting the men who wronged him, in a lean, near-wordless revenge western that strips the genre down to its bones.

But It's a 73-minute B-western with none of Boorman's visual trickery — plain, spare, old-fashioned filmmaking.

Crank2006

Same body-as-weapon, plot-as-pretext structure as Walker's odyssey, played for pure trash spectacle instead of existential dread — what happens if you strip out all the cool restraint and just keep the momentum.

Jason Statham's heart-attack-paced, gleefully trashy thriller takes the 'unstoppable man moving through a city, powered by something other than reason' idea and cranks it into absurd, adrenaline-soaked comedy.

But It has zero interest in Point Blank's cool ambiguity — this is loud, dumb, and proud of it, more theme park ride than film.