The underrated Brian De Palma delivers a gripping neo-noir political thriller on par with the best of what the 1970s had to offer.
This movie narrowly beats out
Carrie (1976) as my favorite flick from American auteur
Brian De Palma.
Blow Out is a paranoid political thriller and a dread-soaked
neo-noir about a sound mixer (someone who records sound for movies and television) who accidentally stumbles into an assassination conspiracy involving a presidential candidate.
De Palma created one of the most memorable endings of the 80s with
Blow Out, and lead actor
John Travolta anchors it well as the film’s outmatched protagonist. Travolta’s performances over his career are a step away from
Nicolas Cage in terms of bouncing between godawful and phenomenal - with a lot of scenery-chewing entertainment along the way - and his performance as an ordinary man in way over his head in
Blow Out definitely sways towards the latter.
[SLIGHT
DEXTER SPOILERS AHEAD]
John Lithgow also serves up a chilling performance as the film’s psychopathic antagonist, so if you enjoyed watching him as the “Trinity Killer” in the television series
Dexter,
Blow Out is worth a watch just for him.
Maybe it’s because he’s more well-known for his action films and crime dramas like
Scarface (1983),
The Untouchables (1987), and
Mission: Impossible (1996), but I’ve never thought De Palma gets enough credit as a horror director. His early career is full of finely crafted genre films, and equally terrifying mystery-thrillers (such as
Blow Out), that still display his creative formal techniques and transgressive content, and it’s bizarre how low or entirely absent he appears on lists of great horror directors.
De Palma also tends to get a lot of flak for aping
Hitchcock’s style early in his career, but even if that’s the case I think if anything De Palma improved upon the style. I respect the innovation Hitchcock brought to the technical side of the art form, but I find the vast majority of his movies to be exhaustingly conventional as a whole, so in that respect I find De Palma to be a substantial upgrade: Hitchcock 2.0. And I will take that hot take to the grave.
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