1967 - POINT BLANK, excellent crime thriller from Lee Marvin and John Boorman

Donald Westlake's cool criminal character who is only known by his last name "Walker," is featured in several films, The Split, The Outfit, and Payback.  Probably the best film based on the Walker character is British director John Boorman's Point Blank.   This was Boorman's first American film and he brought and outsider's view to Southern California and took what could have been a conventional story of a criminal's revenge against a crime syndicate and filmed it incorporating flashbacks and strange dream like sequences.

Lee Marvin was perfect casting for the character of Walker who during a robbery is betrayed by his best friend Mel Reese played by John Vernon and his wife Lynne Walker played by Canadian actor Sharon Acker.  As Walker works his way up the crime syndicate that Reese is now a part of,  he is assisted by Angie Dickinson who is pretty good as Acker's sister in law.  Mention should also be made of Keenan Wynn as a mysterious character named "Yost," who provides Walker information by the syndicate.

 

John Boorman was always a highly individualist film director.  It's amazing he made as many films as he did because Boorman liked to push the narratives of films in unusual storytelling ways.  The Emerald Forest, Zardoz, The Exorcist II: The Heretic to name a few are very odd films.  Boorman had some decent commercial success with Deliverance, Excalibur and the autobiographical Hope and Glory which probably kept him in the movie making game during his career.

 

Point Blank was also a very successful film financially and is now recognized as one of the best films of the 1970's.

The screenplay was by Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse and Rafe Newhouse.  The running time is 92 minutes.