I watched Brian De Palma’s Blow Out because Quentin Tarantino once claimed it was the greatest film he’d ever seen, and a major reason why he wanted to bring John Travolta back to the big screen.
De Palma’s an odd duck: some consider his camera work to be groundbreaking. You can tell you’re watching one of his movies by how many split screen, overhead, and deep-focus shots there are. I find it distracting, and not much in service of either the action or the story being told, but what do I know?
It took me a few sessions to get through this on Tubi, and I came away thinking it was refreshing to see unfortunate female victims so easily manhandled by a hulking John Lithgow. Nowadays they would put up far more of a fight—at least on celluloid—and more often than not end up getting the better of their male adversaries. I sometimes worry that the recent push to turn every female character into a “girl boss” is having a detrimental effect on young women who consume such fairy tales. I hope the more intelligent viewers keep at least some shred of reality in mind before taking on a gang of trained killers.
2024.09.26 – 2024.09.27
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