Film Forum

(1967) Like an angry, righteous machine, godfather of cool Lee Marvin, in blue-grey business suit, systematically hunts down his betrayers to reclaim his rightful share of the take. Visually bold, fractured Neo-Noir influenced American crime films of the 1970s and launched Boorman’s international directing career.  Adapted from The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake. Approx. 92 mins. 35mm. 

Reviews

“This singularly stylized revenge thriller, cryptic yet perfectly clear, bears the influence of Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO and in turn influenced the neo-noir films of directors like Robert Altman, Roman Polanski and Steven Soderbergh… Boorman maintains the film’s slightly unreal, hallucinatory quality with one virtuoso scene after another.”
– Mike Hale, The New York Times

“Angular, spiky, startling…Boorman's classic, disorienting thriller still has all the strange menace and cool intrigue it did in 1967.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“After Boorman’s POINT BLANK, noir would never be the same again.”
– Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

“A masterpiece. A crucial film in the development of the cinema’s portrait of America as a complex of organized crime.”
– David Thomson

“Making his Hollywood debut, Mr. Boorman had the kind of control reserved for the most powerful directors, and he made stunning use of it… Can (now) be read as a prophecy of the fight John Boorman has waged throughout his career, trying to keep his own identity while working for ‘the Organization’ that is Hollywood.”
– Charles Taylor, New York Observer