Brian De Palma’s Blow Out is about a Sound F/X (John Travolta) who accidentally records a car accident that results in the death of a presidential candidate. Travolta manages to save a damsel in distress (Nancy Allen which you may know better from playing Robocop’s sassy female partner) from the back seat of the car. Travolta is convinced by the police to keep his knowledge of the events to himself and away from the media as they attempt to cover up the candidate’s affair with the damsel. Travolta would later listen to his recording and realize that a gunshot blew out the tire that resulted in the accident, it was . . . Murder!!! He attempts to go to the police but he is dismissed as a crackpot, so he must investigate on his own. The story unravels into a bit of mystery, but mostly suspense and few thrills.
De Palma has had a number of critical and financial successes such as; Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, The Untouchables, Casualties of War andMission Impossible. Many accuse De Palma of stealing Hitchcock’s style and ideas (which De Palma makes fun of with his Psychoesque opening), earning a reputation as a rip-off artist. Although I believe there should be an emphasis on the “artist” portion of that reputation. Almost every film is greatly influenced by other films, and I don’t care if you use techniques that other filmmakers have invented as long as you do it effectively. That said, this wasn’t his most effective film (watchDressed to Kill if you want to see one of his more effective Hitchcockian films, and of course Carrie.) There are a few moments of good suspense, and I do love a good split screen shot as much as the next guy but all and all it comes up a bit short.
The plotline is largely borrowed from Blow Up and The Conversation (both are far superior films), which I don’t mind because the tone is much different. The film sets up like it is going to be a good mystery, but Travolta figures out it is a murder pretty quickly. And after that he doesn’t really investigate much further, he spends a lot of his time trying to convince others of his story, but not really trying to figure out what is really going on.
I was excited to see Travolta and Allen teamed together again after pouring pig’s blood over Carrie five years earlier. Nancy Allen appeared in 3 of De Palma’s films (and was married to De Palma from 1979-1984), but this is by far her worst performance. Her character was so annoying that I found myself rooting for Lithgow, who plays a psycho as well as anyone. Travolta wasn’t good or bad, he was okay. Dennis Franz is always good at playing a scuzzball, whether it be as a TV detective or head of security at an airport or in this case a con-man.
Travolta’s back-story working with the police department I found kind of laughable. Lithgow’s deranged government mercenary (who seems far too deranged to be given the assignment of setting up the candidate) is the character that moves things along. Killing women left and right so that when he kills Nancy Allen it will look the work of a serial killer, the only problem is he is only setting up himself as he is the serial killer. It seems like there were a couple times he could have killed Travolta a few times, but chose not to because then who will save Allen at the end. My favorite element of the story is actually when Travolta uses Allen’s near death scream in the horror movie he was working on. I would have liked his character to be a bit more of a scumbag throughout as that moment defines him as.
All in all a couple good moments, but not a great film. I really wanted it would be better being the first movie selected, but I hopefully it will spark some good conversation.
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