United States, 1967
Directed by John Boorman
With Lee Marvin (Walker), Angie Dickinson (Chris), Sharon Acker (Lynne), John Vernon (Mal Reese), Lloyd Bochner (Frederick Carter), Carroll O’Connor (Brewster), Keenan Wynn (Yost)
Sets of dramatic images, often shot at bizarre, slanted angles in a broadly dark cinematography, blatantly messing with timelines and circumstances, are edited in rapid fire, stirring confusion and getting the audience lost, without clues and a clear narrative direction, even as they step into this stylish and sparse noir. Even more striking, eerie images are thrown in, like a bird perched on a barbed wire, or a man who seemed badly shot still climbs walls and strikes a pose at the top.
Then, the same guy stands in a tourist boat touring the Alcatraz island, looking healthy, a bit older, and dour. This is a sunny day with a fitting, bright cinematography while the camera angles are far more tame – but the sound design surprises, the distant echo of the speech of a guide giving information on the infamous prison which turns out to be the place where the film started, words that sounded dreamy and evanescent when the film cuts from the first, hectic and cryptic, sequence to this new one, turning out to be the real sound, clearly audible without alteration, surrounding the character in the boat before another voice, from an equally dour man gets heard, the starting point of a mysterious conversation struggling to carry on while passengers are toing and froing between and around the two men. The audience may have felt they are in more recognizable and relatable cinematic grounds but instead are thrown into a still murky world handled with what remains an elaborate, disturbing cinematic style.
Sound design keeps surprising as this sequence cuts into a scene just recording the lead character walking briskly in a corridor, the thump of his shoes resonating excessively and annoyingly, still audible as other shots displaying other characters are as hastily and abruptly edited as in the beginning. Whatever the resolute and unforgiving fellow vows to do is going to resonate well beyond his close environment and deep into our mind: this story of a thug looking to settle scores and get some money back conveys a brutality and a malaise that sets it a bit apart from other noirs, even if the feeling of disorientation the lead characters can experience and the natural trend of the genre to be a metaphor for a troubled society are not new.
This image in the corridor fits nicely the character and his story: his name is indeed Walker, the plot is about him walking around California to get what he yearns for, the places where he would go are indeed as modern, even clinical, as the corridor. The initial mess of images actually gave the explanation for this walk on the seedy side of the street: urged by a pal, Mal Reese, to help him steal money he badly needs, Walker took part in a job where mobsters got not just robbed but willfully killed and where the third accomplice, his own wife Lynne, switched allegiance and run away with Mal Reese, her new lover, while taking the share of money promised to Walker, who obviously got shot to be silenced. Years later, Walker seeks to get revenge and his loot, cheered by that odd guy in the tourist boat, Yost, who stands by ready to give the information he needs.
He needs indeed a lot of info and support: Mal Reese is now part of an organization and heavily protected. A first stop at Lynne’s house does not make things easier: the distressed and helpless woman has split with Mal Reese and meeting again her former partner ruins little balance her mind still has, and she kills herself the following night. Walker then tries to get in touch with her sister, Chris, talking her into tricking Mal Reese. But nothing plays out as the cunning, prudent, lonesome gangster reckons. Money remains hard to get and he gets caught in a system, moving bloodily up the chain of command of the organization Mal Reese belonged to, dealing with and killing one Frederick Carter and then one Brewster, till he realizes what letting him pursue his goal truly means to others.
Director Samuel Fuller had made it graphically plain in 1961 with his gritty noir “Underworld USA”: the American underworld has changed and what the lead character of that film witnesses as a child has not much to do with what he would have to do decades later to be part of it and avenge himself. Thugs are as callous as ever but violence is carried out at a distance while they display the smartness, the seriousness, and the smugness of corporate executives managing their sleazy business out of towering, modern, and sanitized buildings. Walker feels like an oddity, an awkward antiquity, and is dealt as such by Frederick Carter and even more Brewster who tells him off in straightforward and impatient terms.
His single-handed pursuit of basic demands is viewed as merely archaic, idiotic, enigmatic even – and dutifully rejected not just because it means losing money – but then what 93,000 dollars mean to a corporation whose offices are in a ritzy building – but because it is irrelevant to the sophisticated work of exploiting law and finance in order to earn even more money and power illegally. Walker, who looks always blunt, practical, and sullen (smiles are rare, appearing in a few of the flashbacks, and faintly during a sex scene with Chris), is a stunning, threatening, thrilling presence but also a definitely lonely and foolish man grappling with a world he cannot fully understand, doomed to get incensed and frustrated even as he moves higher up the chain of command – how raw and rough his attitudes and feelings are is powerfully captured when he is forced to speak to the phone by Brewster to the man Brewster is hierarchically linked: to the blunt refusal of his interlocutor Walker responds by firing like mad at the phone, the futile destruction of a technology just signaling what the rules of the game are now.
The end is inconclusive. Would Walker pick up the money dumped next to Brewster’s dead body? Has he vanished forever realizing he cannot get a better deal or just come to terms with the new world? Would he be eventually shot as it has already been attempted? Would he start a new life with Chris he seemed to love or was it just pretending in fact? In his last shot, he fades in the dark, the reverse view of the first shots where his body, active or wounded, emerged from the dark side of Alcatraz, as mute as ever.
Till the end he remains something of an enigma, belonging to an area of darkness, a man never giving his first name and never looking for help, a thug without a background or a personality that are worth of an examination. He has been a force roaming under the blinding spotlight of the sunny Californian sun, wreaking havoc while being badly under strain. Some editing moments put him in absurd and disturbing situations and the original shock of “Point Blank”’s overture and the sense of disorientation the audience felt being the harbinger of those bizarre scenes showing him disoriented and distressed, living through hallucinations suggesting the raw impact of some feelings and fears. A gripping and towering performance by actor Lee Marvin, the character of Walker is a tough and obstinate man who can still be insecure the camera through bold frames and angles has tracked, pointing out, even as Walker’s relentless and silent drive looks awesome and creates exciting scenes, that he is a preposterous adventure in a new criminal world.