They DID remake this movie, as "Payback" with Mel Gibson in the Lee Marvin part and Maria Bello in the variation on the Angie Dickinson part. Ben Affleck need not apply...though I certainly get your point.
Dickinson's beating of Marvin and his implacable "taking" of it, is just one of the ways in which "Point Blank" was a landmark American film of sorts...with the tough-guy revenge stuff tempered by a weird European sensibility. Angie doesn't talk; Lee doesn't talk. She just beats on him and he takes it and she collapses. "Food for thought" -- particularly given that Angie is soon quite voluntarily having sex with Lee(suggested, but certainly sexy enough for '67, because Angie was one of the sexiest women on screen and Lee Marvin's macho drove the ladies wild.)
One more thing about the beating scene...it is not without its humor, too. Angie pounds and pounds, slaps and slaps...and Lee doesn't react. You have to laugh, just a little.
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nickm2
15 years ago
Saw it last night; I had always had a HUGE crush on Angie Dickinson since I was a teen in the 1970s---that's how I discovered this gem;
I have to say, I was surprised how she REALLY cut loose on Marvin & he didn't even flinch. I wonder how many takes THAT shot took!
NM
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bravehome
14 years ago
One of the more subtle subthemes here (at least in contrast to many of this genre's more superficial character portrayals) is that Chris actually begins beating Walker for his refusing an inferred offer to bed him (was she insulted at the inferrence, or simply angry at its refusal?).
That he shows no emotion whatsoever in her passionate beating of him must have infuriated her, since she goes on to find ways to unsettle his outwardly calm demeanor and ends up whacking him over the head with a pool cue.
That this then leads to intimacy highlights the powerful, conflicting emotions Boorman suggests lie just beneath all our rational exteriors....
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