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BLOW OUT
Review by Gordon Justesen
Stars: John
Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz
Director: Brian De Palma
Audio: Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1, Standard 1.33:1
Studio: MGM
Features: Theatrical Trailer
Length: 108 Minutes
Release Date: August 28, 2001
Film ****
One hasn’t experienced a truly great piece of suspenseful
and technical filmmaking until they experience Brian De Palma’s Blow
Out, which I will always remember as the director’s first true
masterpiece. Here’s a film that does what so many movies today attempt to pull
off, which is blending together a ravishingly visual and pure cinematic style,
and at the same time manages to tell a remarkably suspenseful plot. There’s no
doubt that De Palma, who also wrote the screenplay, got inspiration for this
political thriller from the JFK assassination, most specifically the infamous
Zapruder home movie. At the center of Blow
Out is a similar scenario, in which an ordinary civilian is drawn into a
murderous conspiracy concerning a political figure.
Jack Terri (John Travolta)
is a man of sound. He’s a sound effects coordinator for a movie studio in
Philadelphia that specializes mostly in schlock B movies. Late one night, while
he is recording night sounds on a bridge, Jack records and witnesses a sudden
and supposed car accident. The car has a blowout, and immediately plunges into
the river. Jack jumps in, rescues a woman from the backseat, but is unable to
save the driver. While recovering, as well as being questioned by cops at a
nearby hospital, Jack discovers that the driver of the car was a potential
presidential candidate, and the woman, named Sally (Nancy Allen), whose live
Jack saved, was the candidate’s mistress.
The police declare the
incident was indeed accidental, but Jack believes otherwise. After carefully and
repeatedly reviewing the recording, Jack is seriously convinced that just before
the blowout, he can hear a gunshot, which also convinces him that the accident
was no accident at all, but an intended act of murder. If that wasn’t enough,
Jack discovers that Sally was involved in a blackmail scheme against the
candidate, to which a slimy private investigator (Dennis Franz) is credited
with. As Jack keeps digging deeper
and deeper into a major cover up, a sinister hit man named Burke (John Lithgow)
is hot on his, and Sally’s, trail. Burke is a character much in the spirit of
The Jackal in terms of how he maneuvers from one disguise to another, and
becoming nearly undetectable by any means.
All of the terrific
gimmicks from De Palma’s bold world of movie making can be seen in Blow Out,
and they serve the story with absolute brilliance. Split-screens are used, even
in small scenes such as the opening credit scene in Jack’s laboratory, showing
him labeling specific sounds on one side of the screen, while showing television
news footage on the other side. The scene that stands out the most, other than
the potboiling climax, is the scene in Jack’s lab that is done in one take,
with the camera circling around the lab, until Jack discovers something
devastating about his recording. And the climax, which takes place during a
liberty parade and festival, is simply stunning. Jack straps Sally with a wire
and unknowingly uses her as a pawn in a deadly set up by Burke. Fans of the
Hitchcock classics North by Northwest and Strangers on a Train should
be dazzled by the visual strategies De Palma thoughtfully applies, using crowded
areas as set pieces for mind blowing chase scenes. The use of slow motion for
the final action scene is an amazing moment not just for the movie, but also for
De Palma as director.
For John Travolta, this
was perhaps his last greatest achievement in his pre-Pulp Fiction days.
His performance is equal to the countless riveting performances he’s delivered
since his 90s comeback, and Blow Out remains one of the actor’s finest
films to date. The movie also gets some nice work from Nancy Allen and John
Lithgow, who also played the villain in another De Palma movie, Obsession.
The movie didn’t find
its audience upon release in 1981, but it did receive some good critical
acclaim, and has since gone on to find its audience in home video, and now
thankfully, DVD. It’s the quintessential De Palma movie, and one of the
director’s three great movies.
Video ****
Of the three titles that
MGM is releasing, the other two being Dressed to Kill and Carrie,
I was skeptical when I saw that this was the only disc that was issued in a
double sided format, including both the widescreen and full screen versions of
the movie. Also, none of De Palma’s early films have faired very well in the
video department. Boy, did this disc ever exceed my then very low expectations.
The video job on Blow Out is remarkably done, with an anamorphic
presentation to die for. Picture is thoroughly clear and sharp, and surprisingly
doesn’t show one single instance of flaws in any moment of presentation. A
note to the wise, just watch the widescreen version, which I advise for any DVD
movie, but if you watch a Brian De Palma movie in standard format, you’ll be
missing about 75% of the movie, literally.
Audio ***1/2
This audio job on Blow
Out also exceeded my expectations, because you never quite know what to
expect from the performance of a twenty-year-old movie, especially when the
audio format is only in 2.0 surround. However, the sound quality is of sheer
perfection, with speakers brought to life, most especially with the split-screen
sequences, where upon which the left speaker capturing action on the left image,
and the right speaker capturing the action on the right one.
Features *
Only a theatrical trailer,
which seems questionable since MGM loaded the goods on both Dressed to Kill
and Carrie, but failed to acknowledge Blow Out with the same level
of features.
Summary:
Blow Out
is pure cinematic brilliance that is now restored to the format that it should
only be seen in, as the case is with any of this masterful director’s films.