By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Brian De Palma
Starring: Curt May | Dennis Franz | John Aquino | John Lithgow | John McMartin | John Travolta | Nancy Allen | Peter Boyden
Country: united_states
Year: 1981
Running time: 108
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082085/reference
Michael says: “After enjoying Antonioni’s BLOW-UP, I thought it might be fun to check out BLOW OUT, Brian De Palma’s nod to that classic. In the 1966 film about a photographer who inadvertently captures a possible murder while king pictures of a couple in a park, Antonioni explores an entire generational movement in Europe in the 60’s. His film is compelling, artistic, and sure, misogynistic, as the time tended to be, but a fascinating look at a time and a culture wrapped in the framework of psychological thriller. BLOW OUT, made in 1981 by Brian De Palma, capitalized on the rising director’s career, as well as a post-Saturday Night Ever John Travolta in the lead to turn a pretty ordinary thriller into something more than it was. Sadly, fifteen years didn’t do anything at all to address the misogyny, and Nancy Allen is given the pretty thankless role as a victimized dupe in a plot to kill a politician. In De Palma’s film, Travolta plays a sound man who inadvertently captures something on his recording while capturing sounds in a park at night, just before a car accident that leads to the death of a Presidential hopeful. From there it develops into a cat and mouse game between the young photographer and the woman inadvertently caught up in the crime, and the assassin hired to take the politician out of the picture.