By Melvin Cartagena
Point Blank – 1967 – dir. John Boorman
The opening sequences show deception, and Alcatraz. The closing scenes show deception, and Alcatraz. Point Blank explores relationships, mortality and alienation, yet retains a core of impenetrability in its ultimate meaning. An essential mystery remains that no critic or academic that has tackled this movie can fully explain it in writing. Even the mighty Pauline Kael somewhat recanted her initial opinion of the film, going from, “A brutal new melodrama is called Point Blank, and it is,” in a 1967 New Yorker review to “intermittently dazzling,” in a re-viewing of the film a few years later.