Apologies for the lack in reviews these past 2 weeks, i have been tied up patrolling the streets of 1940s Hollywood thanks to the brilliant L.A Noire and have only just got to watching films again. Anyway here's my review for Brian De Palma's brilliant conspiracy thriller BLOW OUT....
If Hitchcock's career started not in the 20s but in the mid sixties and he put a more sexual edge into his films, his work would more than likely look like the films of Brian De Palma. De Palma has this unique visual style that lends itself well to the narrative of his stories, his use of close ups, vibrant colours, split screen techniques and scenes of dialogue free tension really give his films a powerful feel. Look at the Museum scene in Dressed To Kill, near enough 7 minutes long, no talking, no cuts with just fantastic music and a lot of tension. I find it easy to compare De Palma to Hitchcock because they both have this ability to engage the audience and drag them into their sinister plots. With this film, BLOW OUT, I found myself thinking of North By North West, much like I thought of Psycho while watching Dressed to Kill, and while the plots of NBNW and Blow Out are vastly different, they both contain the theme of conspiracy. But they are two completely different films.
When you mention De Palma's name, I guess most people would automatically referrence Scarface, a fantastic film but not as good as his more lower key films.
Blow Out doesn't feel like a studio film but more like an independant movie, it's not a large scale film and seems much more intimate.
John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a sound man for movies, he works on really shitty low budget horror films. Dirty exploitative genre fare like those Friday 13th copies you got in the early 80s, collage horrors, where girls in dormitories get killed off by a knife weilding psychopath, and he doesn't really want to do it. Even the film's director tells him he's too good for the 'shit flicks' that they make. While out recording sounds at night, Terry records a road accident, a car looses controll and drives straight into a river. Jumping in to save the driver, he finds a young girl trapped in the back, save the young girl or the driver. Terry saves the girl and find out that the driver was some senator or city official who dies.
At the hospital, the police and government blokes try and cover up the accident because it turns out the senator was having 'sexy time' with the girl in the back of the car, who is not his wife. But the mystery deepens when Terry listens back to the recording and discovers a gunshot.
The race is on for Terry along with Sally, the girl from the back of the car, to uncover the reason for trying to kill the senator using the sound recordings and a video of the accident while being chased by John Lithgow's hired assassin.
The film is much more than just my 13 line synopsis, but I don't want to give to much away as this is a film in which discovering all the details along with Travolta is part of the fun of the film.
The cast in this is pretty bang on. Travolta coming straight off of Urban Cowyboy (1980) and just before Staying Alive ('83) delivers quite possibly the best performance of his career. John Terry is a man with a past, he wasn't a jock in highschool, he was the nerdy kid who built radios and sound equipment, he worked for the police and after a major fuck up during a mob sting moved into sound recording for films. Throughout the course of the film Travolta gets more disheveled looking, more worn out, and his performance mirrors his look. Travolta has been great in most films he's in, especially Pulp Fiction ('94) but where as Vincent Vega is more a cartoon character, Jack Terry is human, you know that in real life this kind of guy really does exist. We don't get the OTT shouting travolta we've seen in most of his more recent films, which is great because he could have been type cast after Grease but instead took a different direction. He is outstanding in Blow Out.
Nancy Allen plays another kind of on the outskirts character like she did in De Palma's previous Dressed To Kill, and again, much like the previous film, is great and kooky and you know she's not all she makes out to be. She has this really odd high pitched Boston Twang to her voice in this, a real airhead type voice and is always getting into trouble as it seems to follow her. Being married to De Palma at the time, it was obvious she would be in this and she does give a great performance it's just a shame she's not making much at the moment. Like I said in my review for Long Kiss Goodnight about Geena Davis, they're both great on film and sorely missed.
Dennis Franz (NYPD Blue) pops up as a scummy photography in cahoots with Sally, he's a real lowlife and we find out why and how he gets photos of the crash. He's pretty good and spends most of the film in this really dingy neon lit apartment in just a white vest and trousers, he's a proper scumbag o the highest order.
Then we come to John Lithgow, the man is a legend, such a great actor and one never really held in high regard. Here he plays Burke, a hired assassin of sorts, and man he's one creepy son-of-a-bitch. He's trying to stop Travolta uncovering the conspiracy by erasing his tapes and killing anyone connected to it. There is a really creepy scene set in a train station in which he strangles a woman in a cubicle using a wire from his watch. Just creepy. Lithgow is great in almost everything he is in.
De Palma once again shows his visual style is matched by no one, the way he shoots Blow Out is incredible. Close ups, split screens, the use of music, the sound design is amazing. Everything seems to work well, he has a way of making the most disturbing and tense scenes look beautiful. Its a shame he isn't given the opportunity to do the same with his more modern movies. One scene in particular isincredible to watch, Terry is driving at immense speed in his Jeep and we see him drive through some arches and it's all shot from over head, looking down. It's just a visual feast and contrast of colours in some scenes is a sight to behold, you have neon green hanging with neon red, then you have red sand against the night, it's extremely well lit. But then again most of De Palma's films are exceptionally well lit. There are also some technically outstanding one take tracking shots such as the opening which you find out is a scene from a slasher film, it's incredibley well handled and also very tense but at the same time sleazy and while De Palma's films usually have this sexual edge to them, they're never on a level of sleaze or exploitation.
The film is accompanied perfectly by Pino Donaggio's score, and much like score for Dressed To Kill the music changes with the mood of the film. It's soft when you have a romantic scene, then fast when you have a chase scene and moody when you have an atmospheric scene. For me, sometime you don't have a good film unless you have a great score and Blow Out does.
What's my final Verdict?
For people wanting to discover De Palma's work, i'd sayease your self in with Scarface, it's probably his most accessable film, then possibly Carlito's way, and then go back, start with maybe Sisters then Body Double and finally Dressed To Kill and Blow Out. Blow Out is in my opinion one of the best thrillers you could ever see. De Palma is or was during the 70s and 80s a brilliant alternative to Alfred Hitchcock. So for an unbelievably good performance from Travolta, a tense atmospheric thriller that doesn't cater to the 'younger audience' Blow Out is the one to go for, but although I did love this film, I don't think it's as good as Dressed To Kill which I maintain is the best film De Palma ever made, but Blow Out is still a phenomanol achivement in thriller film making...
why not have a De Palma double bill and watch both Dressed To Kill and Blow Out. They're both brilliant films...
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