John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) has long been recognised as one of the seminal films of the
sixties with its revisionary mix of genres including neo-noir New Wave and spaghetti
western. Its lasting influence can be traced throughout the decades in films like Mean Streets
(1973) Reservoir Dogs (1992) Heat (1995) The Limey (1999) and Memento (2000). Eric Wilson's
compelling study of the film examines its significance to New Hollywood cinema. He argues that
Boorman revises traditional Hollywood crime films by probing a second connotation of 'point
blank'. On the one hand it is a neo-noir that aptly depicts close range violence but it also
points toward blankness a nothingness that is the consequence of corporate America unchecked
where humans are reduced to commodities and stripped of agency and playfulness. He goes on to
reimagine the film's experimental style as a representation of and possible remedy for trauma.
Examining Boorman's formal innovations including his favouring of gesture over language and
blurring of boundaries between dream and reality he also positions the film as a grimly
comical exploration of toxic masculinity and gender fluidity. Wilson's close reading of Point
Blank reveals it to be a film that innovatively inflects its own generation and speaks
powerfully to our own arguing that it is this amplitude which encompasses the many major
films it has influenced that qualifies the film as a classic.
