GREAT FLICK. I love this movie. You want to see why Travolta is considered a great movie actor? Watch this movie. Brian De Palma directed this haunting very frightening film. Can't recommend it highly enough. SEE IT.
Blow Out 1981
Blow Out 1981
It's hallucinatory, and it has a dreamlike clarity and inevitability, but you'll never make the mistake of thinking it's only a dream. John Travolta is Jack, a sound-effects man who happens to record the noise of a car speeding across a bridge, a shot, a blowout, and the crash of the car to the water below. The driver -- the governor who is the most popular candidate for the Presidency -- is dead, but Jack is able to rescue the governor's passenger, a cuddly blonde (Nancy Allen). On paper this movie, written and directed by Brian De Palma, might seem to be just a political thriller, but it has a rapt intensity that makes it unlike any other political thriller. Playing an adult (his first), and an intelligent one, Travolta has a vibrating physical sensitivity like that of the very young Brando, and Nancy Allen, who gives her role a flirty iridescence, is equally vivid. It's as if De Palma had finally understood what technique is for; this is the first film he has made about the things that really matter to him. It's a great movie (and probably the best of all American conspiracy movies).
I'll say it again: great flick. See it, if you haven't.
Posted by sheilaI remember seeing it on cable in late '81 or '82; I really liked it. I thought all the prinicpals--DePalma, Travolta, Allen--showed more than I thought they had in them. Come to think of it, it was quite a different role for John Lithgow, too.
Posted by: Ken Hall at May 12, 2005 9:41 AMYeah - that's right! Lithgow! It's just such a creepy movie. You get this unbelievable sense of menace - this simple sound-effects guy caught up in forces beyond his control.
Posted by: red at May 12, 2005 10:15 AM