Thursday, January 21, 2010

Is Point Blank a comedy?

TCM is showing the thriller Point Blank at 8:00 PM ET tonight. Truth be told, I haven't actually seen the movie before. Actually, I think I might have seen the first few minutes once before when it aired on TCM, and knew before seeing it show up this week that it's a 60s thriller with Lee Marvin; in fact, I've kind of been waiting for it to show up again on the TCM schedule. At any rate, as TCM is wont to do with the movies airing in prime time, they promote the movie by showing the trailer. Unfortunately, the trailer gives a rather different impression to me than what the film likely really is.



The trailer seems delightfully over the top, to the point that it almost makes the movie look like a comedy, or at least an unintentional comedy. The trailer also looks as badly dated as The Thomas Crown Affair, with the shot above, of Lee Marvin walking through a long corridor with those ghastly 60s-style lights with the plastic covers showing up again and again. (To be honest, I think two shots were used, as the other sequence has the lights recessed in the ceiling, much the way the giant office at the beginning of The Apartment, or any other office building of the time, was.)

In all fairness, Point Blank the movie is probably better than Point Blank the trailer. I'm certainly looking forward to finding out!

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