S4E48: Point Blank

November Kelly (0:00)

Wow. That was really exciting.

Devon (0:06)

I bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan, aren't you?

November Kelly (0:11)

Me too.

Abigail Thorn (0:12)

I love that game.

November Kelly (0:31)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined as always by my friends, Abigail Thorn and Devon.

Abigail Thorn (0:38)

Hello, gentle listener.

Devon (0:40)

Cowabunga, dear listener.

November Kelly (0:43)

Mm, and do you want a movie that rules? Because...

Devon (0:48)

Fuck yeah, I do.

November Kelly (0:49)

This is a movie that rules.

Abigail Thorn (0:50)

This movie rules.

November Kelly (0:51)

I was inspired by the little Lee Marvin reference from Reservoir Dogs, and I was like, you know who does a movie that rules is Lee Marvin. And so on that basis, I thought that I would show us Point Blank, which is a 1967 John Borman movie, right?

Devon (1:13)

John Borman. Welcome back to the podcast.

November Kelly (1:15)

Yes, right.

Devon (1:17)

What else has John Borman done?

Abigail Thorn (1:19)

Ah, nice.

Devon (1:21)

And who prints out the things that might make us watch this?

Abigail Thorn (1:25)

This movie, very different from Zardoz.

November Kelly (1:28)

Yes.

Abigail Thorn (1:28)

Very different from Zardoz.

November Kelly (1:30)

But contains seeds of the same kind of hippie avant-garde sensibility in places.

Devon (1:36)

I think so.

November Kelly (1:36)

I think it's... This movie is functionally, what if you got the guy who did Zardoz to do a gangster movie, right?

Abigail Thorn (1:45)

Yeah.

Devon (1:46)

Yeah, and it rocks.

Abigail Thorn (1:47)

I love the editing in this movie. It's edited so well, and I think it has some of the best transitions since the three of us. Like, it's just so... Like, between scenes, it's just, like, really fucking cool and efficient. It's really good. It's like a tight 90 minutes, too, and like super fucking tight. Like, the bolts are fucking...

I love it.

November Kelly (2:05)

This is the thing. This could have been slot. This could so, so easily... Yes.

Abigail Thorn (2:09)

Oh, yes.

November Kelly (2:10)

Any other director, any other editor, and this could have been a really forgettable kind of Lee Marvin vehicle that you go to see because you want to see Lee Marvin shoot a guy and sort of get tough and, like, you know, slap guys around. And instead of that, it's something really different and something that I think has an enduring appeal and an enduring deconstruction of masculinity that I think makes it really, really good for us.

Abigail Thorn (2:39)

Yeah. It rocks. Absolutely. But we open on a dude getting fucking cooked out, bang, bang, dude shot, man harmed in a prison cell.

And we get a kind of like a freeze frame narration, like, yeah, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got in this crazy situation.

November Kelly (2:56)

That's all I'm thinking about.

Abigail Thorn (2:59)

No, no, not quite. We get a guy gets shot in a prison cell and we hear his thoughts. He's like, prison cell, how did I get here? I've been hurt. Right. And this guy's name is Walker.

And this scene is so efficient. We flash back a lot in back and forward in time, which makes it difficult to summarize. But Walker is at a drunken party and this guy, Reese, his best mate, comes to him and is like, I need your help. I'm in deep trouble. I owe some money, some bad people.

November Kelly (3:24)

This party is very much like the horrible gangsters from Sexy Beast. Right?

I have a bit here where I look at Walker, who is being sort of almost like physically sort of like groped, basically being manhandled by all of these kind of like drunkenly insensible men in suits, and I just kind of write down, this is how male socialization, in air quotes, feels as a trans woman?

Devon (3:50)

Yeah, it does. It's so affronting. It's like this sea of just men, like fucking bright red male faces, all doing the like HAHAHAHAHAHA type like deals laugh in the background. It's...

November Kelly (4:05)

You are a whole human being in a Ralph Stedman cartoon, right? It's terrifying.

Abigail Thorn (4:10)

You're in the burly brawl from The Matrix if they all just came in and partied.

November Kelly (4:13)

Yeah, and we're like cutting forward in a really jagged way, as he's sort of remembering and putting it back together, of this guy, Mal, his best friend, sort of like taking him to the floor and almost sort of like grabbing him by the face and almost sort of like banging his face off of the floor and shouting into his face. You're my friend, Walker, right? You know, trust me, this is...