BLOW OUT – brian de palma – 6.9 / 10

Though it sags as it draws to a close (and really provides no closure on the vast governmental conspiracy at the heart of the story), Blow Out is pretty entertaining through its first half. Since I’m no fan of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up and its mod, sixties, free love, lack of structure bullshit, it gives me some pleasure to watch De Palma turn that film into a straightforward, Hollywood-ized thriller. The idea of turning an arty festival piece into mainstream entertainment is perversely exciting to me.

But, as fun as that is and as big a kick as I get out of it, that still can’t account for the movie’s failings. There’s really just no way for one man to believably take down a huge conspiracy that killed a presidential candidate. That’s one area where Blow Up actually got it right. By not having any real resolution to the story, the filmmakers didn’t have to come up with a believable ending. And, since it was an artsy foreign film anyway, they could have just had the main character get bumped off and nobody would have complained.

De Palma, however, was making his film for a different audience, one that needed to see the hero win. And thus his huge governmental conspiracy turns out to be one rouge agent who went off the reservation so that the hero can kill him and put an end to it. And while that sorta works on its own terms, De Palma couldn’t very well have the hero actually reveal the conspiracy to the world. So he just ends up sad and alone.

That last aspect is something I’ve never understood about conspiracy movies. They always have the hero’s attempt to reveal the whole truth thwarted at the end. And I can’t quite ever figure that out. The people who make these movies trust their audiences to believe that a vast conspiracy could exist since it is, after all, the premise of the film. But they don’t think people will believe that a conspiracy could ever be revealed? Perhaps it’s a comment on the nature of conspiracies. Or maybe it’s a subtle hint that similar conspiracies have taken place many times in our country but none of them have been revealed.

I kinda like that last explanation and it works okay as a thematic reading of the film. But it also renders the film decidedly unsatisfying. Denying the hero the thing he seeks, keeping him from reaching his goal, is no way to satisfy an audience. And because of that, none of these conspiracy movies (Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, Enemy of the State, etc.) ever end up being very satisfying or memorable. I guess I can now add Blow Out to that list.

But Blow Out is worth watching for De Palma’s direction. Though he’s not trying out anything new here (and hence could be accused of phoning it in), all his tricks are on display. In fact, this film acts as a rather neat summation of all the directorial flourishes he developed in the 70's. You’ve got the movie within a movie from Body Double, the split screen from Inferno and Dressed to Kill, the fetishization of the female form from every damn movie he ever made, the disinterested authority figures of Dressed to Kill and the hooker with a heart of gold from five or six of his films.

So, in the end, Blow Out is worth watching if you’re a De Palma fan (though you aren’t likely to pick up on anything new) but you can probably turn it off halfway through and not miss anything.