In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola wrote and directed "The Conversation", a moody thriller about a world-renowned surveillance expert, who, through piecing together his accumulated evidence, suspects the couple he has been spying on are about to be murdered. Seven years later, Coppola contemporary Brian De Palma wrote and directed "Blow Out", a moody thriller about a locally-renowned movie soundman, who, through piecing together his accumulated evidence, comes to realize that a presidential candidate has just been murdered. "Blow Out" is ostensibly a riff on the same themes Michelangelo Antonioni explored in "Blowup". That's fine thinking for someone who has seen both films. I haven't. So I'm left with "The Conversation" as my touchstone.

I'm also left with two films that help illustrate how the more fun film experience is not necessarily the more satisfying film experience, and how even a dull bore of a picture can enlighten and enrich more than the most well-made popcorn film. "The Conversation", at its core, is a thoughtful meditation on one man's paranoia, set against a background full of subtle political intrigue. Its slow pacing, coupled with an introverted lead performance by the normally charismatic Gene Hackman, make it a chore to get through. But doing your chores often times leaves your home clean. "Blow Out" looks and feels like a viscerally intense thriller, though it's really just an exercise in style that pays lip service to blatantly obvious political overtones. But, by doing so in a clumsy and ham-fisted way, it nearly torpedoes its good intentions. Assuming, of course, that it has any intentions at all, other than to entertain.

The general conceit holds great possibility. Jack Terry, a soundman for a series of low-budget horror movies (listing off their titles -- "Bad Day at Blood Beach" jumps immediately to mind -- gets a cheap, early laugh), is a man with a past. While recording outdoor sounds for his next magnum opus, he witnesses a car accident. Or does he? After rescuing one victim, Jack finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy. Lies are told, girls disappear, and everything leads all the way to the White House! Yes, that's right: the plot is so overblown I have to describe it using italics of faux-excitement.

Before finding ourselves in the story proper, "Blow Out" serves up a self-consciously ludicrous beginning: a knife-wielding voyeur stalks his prey outside the windows of what appears to be the world's first clothing-optional sorority house. This three-and-a-half minute sequence is an obvious horror parody. Though hacky and unintentionally amusing (like most good B-horror movies), it does set up the theme of subjective perspective: we get to see the carnage inflicted through the eyes of the killer. Though played for chilly laughs in this early sequence, De Palma will return to this technique many times throughout the film. It won't always be used intelligently, but will always give the film a certain sense of style.

When it is used intelligently, "Blow Out" is a smash-up of a thriller. Following in the heels of the point-of-view used to perfection in the opening, we get two sequences that work in tandem to show just how much style and technique -- both in a filmmaking and a storytelling vein -- De Palma has (had?) at his fingertips. The sequence where Jack witnesses the car crash is played out deliberately, but systematically. We are given an opportunity to step into his shoes, to get his "objective eyewitness testimony", and understand just what was going through his head at the time. Even more impressive, though, is a scene later on, where Jack listens back to the tape he's made, and, through visualization techniques, steps into his own memory. He pictures the accident, in his mind's eye, while listening to the audio on his tape. De Palma expertly skips back and forth between the memory of the night in question and the stoic intensity of Travolta concentrating on the sounds coming through his headphones. If only all of "Blow Out" was as tangibly exciting as these two seemingly simple but oh-so-complex scenes.

When De Palma goes with different techniques things get a bit dicey. Burdened with fighting off the reputation that he's merely a Hitchcock impersonator, De Palma does little to dispel that rumour here, using shot after overhead shot, to the point where a retributive audience would feel like unleashing bird droppings on the actors in their scenes. Watching Dennis Franz (wearing a mustard-stained wife-beater, just in case you missed that he's supposed to be a sleazy dude) fumble and "ooh baby" his way through a date-rape scene, from 10 feet above, makes the horror of the act almost comic. The combination of the overhead shot and the underwritten dialogue marks this as the film's low point.

Further complicating matters is the fact that most of the characters act like they were auditioning for one of Jack's horror movies, rather than a thriller for one of Hollywood's true visual stylists. John Lithgow, as a cold-blooded operative hell-bent on cleaning up the mess he created, is probably the slowest, most gratuitously methodical killer I've seen ply his trade on a movie screen. Lithgow is chilling -- his stone-faced stare makes you forget that he ever camped it up as a sitcom alien -- but his character is more of a broad device than a man meant to strike fear in the hearts of his audience.

Nancy Allen loses you every time she opens her mouth. That helium'd Betty Boop-voice of hers will make you want to attend a blackboard scratching party, for relief's sake. But if you look hard enough, and cover your ears with your hands, she's not the dumb dame she appears to be. Sally is a girl caught in a tough spot, looking out for opportunities to give her life some stability, but not smart enough to realize when those opportunities are hazardous.

John Travolta, whose mere appearance in a film usually bugs me more than an entomologist convention, is the only effective member of the entire cast. And yet he's entirely wrong for the part. I can't help but think that his Jack Terry should be a plain-looking schlub, stuck in a dead-end job and racked with repressed guilt. The opportunity he's offered, by being in the wrong place at the right time (or the right place at the wrong time), should feel like the only second chance his life's going to give him. Travolta, with his piercing blue eyes and dimpled chin, is just way too good-looking, here, to believe that he'd ever have anything but a charmed life. Add to that the fact that his slicked-back hair gives him a Dracula-like widow's peak, and along with it the rogue sexuality of history's greatest bloodsucker. Not the loser that I was imagining at all. Still, despite all this, Travolta does manage to burst through the fact that Jack is hardly a character -- as written -- doing well to show the man's dissatisfaction, tenacity, skill, and underlying anxiety about the position he finds himself in.

There are a lot of references, here, to recent political scandals. Recent as of 1981, that is. Not that the time-lapse between that era and now hurts the film. Rather, it's the flimsiness of the references that toss things off the track. Or the bridge, as the movie would have it. In a Chappaquiddick-inspired fit of insanity, the film sets things in motion by throwing a beloved Governor and his mistress into the drink, as they race to (or is it from?) an illicit tryst. Eventually there is much ado about covering up the real details of the accident, and eliminating any loose ends, which some have likened to post-Watergate paranoia, while I see it merely as Watergate for Watergate's sake. When things finally wrap amidst a Philadelphia extravaganza celebrating the glory that is the Liberty Bell, my suspicions that the film was just slumming in the arena of dubious American politics were confirmed. Watch as Jack cradles the head of a fallen friend, with a tortured look on his face, while red, white, and blue fireworks crash overhead, and you'll see the pomp and circumstance for what it really is, too: self-indulgence.

Much of the film's seriousness -- and I'm still not completely sold on the idea that the film is supposed to be serious -- is undermined by a hilariously incompetent and melodramatic musical score. Pino Donaggio, the film's composer, worked a lot with De Palma from the late seventies to the early eighties. I'm thinking that he has naked photos of the director, stashed away in a safety deposit box somewhere, so clueless is the music he churns out here. Overwhelming strings, tacky bombast, and boorish emotional telegraphing tarnish moment after moment. There's part of me that suspects it's all a parody. And that would be fine. But if you're going to do parody, at least have the decency to make the parody obvious. Otherwise, the audience is either guessing or annoyed.

The story, which should act like a steam engine heading downhill, actually starts to meander somewhere in the third act. What should be intriguing ("I've been trying to call you all afternoon!" "But I've been here all afternoon!" "Are you telling me someone's tinkering with your phone, now?"), turns into bland hijinks. Our characters change from being proactive and forceful into talky whiners. Thrillers are supposed to ratchet up the tension, as the end approaches. "Blow Out" wouldn't know a ratchet from a toothbrush.

The film ends on a note that, depending on your viewpoint, will either make you stand up and cheer along with its brilliant cynicism, or heave your lunch into the a nearby bucket from witnessing something so nauseatingly tasteless. It's rare that a moment straddles the thin line between commentary and misogyny, as this one does. I'll have to give De Palma and Co. credit for confusing me mercilessly. Though not nearly enough to recommend the rest of this overdone and underwhelming picture.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD