Lately I've been in a real mood for very stylized film making. I think "Inglourious Basterds" had something to do with it, but then again these feelings come in waves so who can really say. In any case over the weekend I finally sat through all of Brian De Palma's "Body Double" which in a lot ways had elements I liked, but together and done in the fashion it was done I really didn't like it.
However it did have me longing for one of his films I don't own on DVD and that's "Blow Out" with John Travolta and Nancy Allen. So being broke and not having the time to find a proper download for it I watched a few Scorsese pictures, realized that I actually really dug "Gangs of New York" and that I should watch "Cape Fear" more often. But now with my computer set up and a few extra hours I did re-watch the entire film and reaffirmed how great a thriller it is. More specifically it's my kind of thriller.
"Blow Out" follows Jack, a sound designer for low budget horror flicks in Philadelphia. One night he's out on a bridge recording some sounds when he records the sound of a car blowing a tire, hitting a street lamp and plummeting into the lake. He rushes to the lake and manages to save a woman from the back seat. The male driver however was already deceased. Nothing too out of the ordinary right? That would be the case if it weren't for the very bizarre line of questioning from the police, followed by a conversation with a political candidates manager. The other person in the car you see is the senator who was set to run for president. Jack is very good at his job and listens to that tape again and again and again until he is convinced that there was indeed a blow out... one that was caused by a gun shot a few seconds before. The rest of the film deals with Jack searching out the truth, trying to convince people to help and believe him including Sally (Nancy Allen) who he saved from the car.
Sally's place in this story is something out of the ordinary, but it's not my place to discuss that. De Palma is a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, and in most of his 70's and 80's work that is something that's pretty easy to spot. I've always looked at it as Hitchcockian with flash. A lot of the performances he achieves are mocked after Janet Leigh's work with Hitchcock, while still being very with the times. I love Travolta in the film as he's never quite Jimmy Stewart in "Rear Window" or quite the paranoid theorist running around like a mad man... well at least not till later. For the most part he's just frustrated, but very smart. He keeps a level head and thinks his way around these situations.
It's political, it's big and it's frantic. "Blow Out" builds up strong and finishes stronger like a great thriller should. That De Palma flash is in almost every single frame and the very matter-of-fact conversations never dull in it's crisp format. If you like thrillers and films that have got that sort of old school, new school vibe then rent it, buy it, download, whatever. "Blow Out" is a great flick.
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