Blow Out

directed by Brian De Palma (1981)

I caught most of this last night and even not seeing the whole thing, I can understand why it was a failure at the box office.  It's got a gigantic plot hole that makes you totally lose all belief in the story, then it piles on a terrible ending that makes you hate the hero too.

John Travolta is a movie sound FX guy who's doing foley work.  He's capturing sounds with his super sensitive mic near a bridge and that puts him right position to record an accident.   He sees a car go off the rails - an apparent blow out - and rescues a woman in the car, saving her from drowning.  The driver dies, and he's a Governor, the apparent candidate to beat for the next US Presidential election.  I missed all this and started watching at the accident aftermath in the hospital, but I really didn't miss much at all, because somebody was filming the accident too, and you get to see that footage later, ad infitum, mostly in flashback form when Travolta listens to his recording.

So what's wrong this movie?  It comes down to 2 things, plausibility and accountability.  It's a conspiracy flick and I'm fine with that, I think there are all kinds of conspiracies naturally going on all the time, that's not unbelievable.  It's the way Travolta's character treats Nancy Allen, the supporting woman in peril character.  On the one hand he rescues her, then he's always manipulating her, because he likes her, but also because he wants her to stick around so she can help him figure out who caused the accident.  His interactions with her are so self serving, then for no plausible reason at all,  he deliberately puts her in danger. Really it felt very misogynistic, and it made no sense except to set up the finale. Besides, the bit where he uses her scream in a horror film?   Man, that took the cake.  Callous much?

I did like all the behind the scenes film and sound editing stuff.  Film geekery good times.

It's a cool period piece with lots of street scene detail too.  And the acting is good.  I bought Travolta's frustration and bitterness, though Nancy Allen's naive prostitute was a little too cliche.  Dennis Franz as a sleazy photographer and John Lithgow as a psycho henchman were especially good in their small roles.

It's such a good looking flick that I wanted to like it so I was disappointed how brainless it goes in the final reel. Could be it was better before 2 reels were lost.  Parade footage was reshot at a cost of $750,000 and  maybe there were more crucial details in those reels that went missing.  Was there stuff that couldn't be restaged due to circumstances, and that compromised the integrity of the story?  Maybe that's giving too much credit to action sequences saving the day though.

It's a very meta movie about reality as a construct, and how media is not necessarily an accurate reflection of reality, that it too is an abstraction that can be distorted to shape and influence the world as well.  I liked that - there's lots of clever in this film.  Just the ending I hated.  It's so dumb and melodramatic.

I have to say in spite of my misgivings, I enjoyed it.  I was captivated by the flick from the moment I started watching it, even minus the beginning.  De Palma's stuff is entertaining even and perhaps particularly when you don't like the characters.  He does pulpy and bizarre really well and I always look forward to seeing whatever he does.  I think Tarantino really learnt a lot from him visually.