Point Blank (1967)

After he has been double crossed and shot by his partner (John Vernon) after they've committed a robbery, a man (Lee Marvin) survives his wounds and seeks revenge. Based on the novel THE HUNTER by Richard Stark and directed by John Boorman (DELIVERANCE). The film is an exercise is nihilistic swank and possibly the closest an American crime film has come to Jean Pierre Melville's stylish French gangster films. One shouldn't look for depth of meaning in something like this when it's all about style and when the style is this good, what else matters? Some have suggested that the entire film is a dream but I don't buy it. Boorman and his editor Henry Berman have taken a genre piece and permeated it with observational languor and chic stoicism and the film fairly drips with a sort of bleak romanticism. Remade poorly in 1999 as PAYBACK. With Angie Dickinson (her slapdown of Marvin is a film highlight), Keenan Wynn, Carroll O'Connor, Sharon Acker, Lloyd Bochner, James Sikking, Kathleen Freeman and Roberta Haynes.