Review: Point Blank

PLOT: An emergency room nurse’s (Anthony Mackie) pregnant wife is kidnapped and the only way to get her back is to help a wounded con (Frank Grillo) break out of the hospital and avoid capture.

REVIEW: It’s interesting that Netflix, in addition to their massive-budget tent poles and Oscar bait, often finds the most success with their scaled-down programmers, with them making headlines for having helped resurrect the romantic comedy with flicks like ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE and TO ALL THE BOYS I LOVED BEFORE. POINT BLANK tries to do the same thing for low-budget action movies, the type of programmers that routinely used to hit theaters in the pre-superhero days, and it’s the kind of fast-paced, down and dirty flick that would have easily been a theatrical hit back in the eighties and nineties.

A remake of the Fred Cavayé French film of the same title (this should not be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin flick, which was itself remade as PAYBACK), this is an agreeably fast-paced action flick, very much in the mold of producer/star Frank Grillo’s earlier WHEELMAN. Running a lean eighty-five minutes, and directed with flair by up-and-coming genre director Joe Lynch (MAYHEM), POINT BLANK shows just how solid these lower-key action movies can be when properly funded, cast, and directed.

Anthony Mackie and Frank Grillo are fresh choices for the leads, being familiar enough to draw in viewers, but also not over-exposed to the point that the movie feels formulaic. Mackie, in particular, has never really gotten to show his stuff in a proper action movie. He’s well-cast as the everyman hero, a relatable nurse just trying to do what he can, by whatever means necessary, to save his very pregnant wife (“Mad Men”’s Teyonah Parris). His character isn’t a gun-wielding badass. He’s the good guy caught up in a bad situation, and Mackie gives him a likable, down-to-earth vibe, making him a relatively realistic hero.

By contrast, Grillo’s more the badass, although by giving him a bullet wound in his abdomen and making him rely on morphine and adrenaline to function, they’ve done a good job making him more vulnerable than the usual action hero. He’s also got an edge to him that allows him to play a guy teetering on a fine line between being a good guy/bad guy, and the two make a solid pair with good chemistry (not that this is the first time these Marvel vets have been on-screen together). Another interesting choice is Marcia Gay Harden, who’s cast against type as the hard-bitten, seen-it-all cop after the pair. It’s tied together by creatively eccentric direction by Lynch. He makes some likably off-kilter choices here that distinguish it from Cavayé’s more meat-and-potatoes original. For one, the movie is filled with old-school jams that kick-in during the action scenes, including Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”, Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Love Missile F1-11”, and most memorably, Oran Juice Jones’s “The Rain” which is used during Grillo’s big hand-to-hand fight scene.

Lynch’s influence seems especially felt in the last half-hour, where Markice Moore’s gangster, Big D, becomes part of the story and proceeds to steal every scene. You don’t often get an action movie where one of the characters stops the show to talk about William Friedkin’s TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A, or watch SORCERER with his pals and complain about how it was beaten at the box office by STAR WARS, but it’s touches like this that keep POINT BLANK from feeling too run of the mill.

If I have one complaint-it’s that the movie has a very abrupt ending. It felt like they were building up to a major action scene, but instead, it ends on a very low-key note, as if they ran out of cash and had to wrap things up quickly. It’s not a bad ending, but I wish it had a little more meat on it. Nevertheless, POINT BLANK is a totally fun B-movie action flick and makes for a fun watch on Netflix. If it shows up on your homepage, give it a look. You’ll have a good time.