Deep Dangerous Sexy Freeze

Is Lee Marvin the coolest man to ever walk the earth? Today, as I write this, directly after rewatching his detached though complicated, gloriously glacial though substantially obsessed badass gangster in John Boorman’s neo-noir Point Blank, I am saying yes. In my world, Lee Marvin is the grand master, the most deserving mac daddy, the top dog, numero-uno recipient in my own personal cool-cat contest. And he’s so cool that if he were alive to read this now, he would have cared less. Cool guys can’t be bothered with such silly, effusive honors.

Of course, I might change my mind tomorrow (after all, there are those other kings of cool swaggering through cinema --  Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, Alain Delon, Humphrey Bogart, Toshiro Mifune, John Garfield, Lee Van Cleef…oh Lee Van Cleef… and so on) and my purpose here isn’t ranking chill factor, it’s discussing Marvin as tough guy. But I can’t talk Marvin without regarding his late-’60s, early-’70s hep-a-tude, especially since Marvin’s deep freeze was what made him so potently formidable in 1967’s Point Blank  --  a movie that spins its tough-guy protagonist to the existential limit.

The story is simple, yet layered with all kinds of mystery. Marvin plays Walker, a man who was deceived, robbed and left for dead by his evil former bosses. Returning from the wreckage of his past, he storms through a slick, sick Los Angeles seeking payback for his money and his life, enacting all sorts of violent vengeance on any sorry sap getting in his way. That $93,000 his bosses owe will be met with blood, guts and an agenda that’s obvious but compellingly peculiar. Marvin is a hulking force of icy bloodlust, a man so filled with rage that he’s numbed himself  --  almost into a zombie. Inside, he’s half dead, and obtaining all that money (“I want my money!”) is the only way he might possibly reanimate the near-Frankenstein he’s become.

I say near monster because, in Marvin’s hands (and in his fantastic squinty eyes, his wonderful early-to-age white hair and his deep, rich voice), there’s a tortured, emotional soul underneath his frighteningly unflappable exterior. You can’t become tough without a little pain, and Marvin’s Walker has felt pain. And this deeply embedded despair heats up his thick-skinned reserve with a potent blend of savagery and sexuality.  When Marvin simply stands while hot-headed babe Angie Dickinson smacks the shit out of him with her purse and then her flailing hands and slaps, it’s a sizzling overload of detachment, violence and sexual aggravation that ends with an exhausted Dickinson simply giving up. Or giving in -- an angry lady orgasm in a heap on the floor. Why I find this both hilarious and hot only lends to the picture’s sometimes bewildering power and turbulent eroticism.

And what happens following her fit? He ambles upstairs and watches TV. Yes, only the imperturbable Lee Marvin makes handling the television appear almost as cool as a handling his gat. As a postmodern noir, Marvin sitting in front of the tube following Angie Dickinson’s fury, frustration and fever seems perfectly, absurdly appropriate. And unlike many modern films, one is actually excited (though a little terrified) for the make-up sex.

Tweaked and extended from my favorite tough guy at MSN.

Comments

[Stewart]

Definitely agree with you on that scene from Point Blank. It might be my favorite scene in the movie, outside of the shakedown of that car dealer (in the car dealer's own car, no less).

[Ian W. Hill]

I was a little nervous watching Point Blank for the first time with my non-film-buff fiancee (who does at least have a thing for noir and neo-noir, but otherwise thinks the Production Code killed movies for adults early on). She's not much on "tough guys" either, and rejects anything that could normally be thought of in any way as "macho" behavior.

However, after the Angie-beats-Lee scene, she said, in awe, "Lee Marvin is the coolest man who's ever walked the earth." And I definitely agree (and can't feel a bit jealous - he's LEE MARVIN for crissakes!).

This dethroned her previous "coolest man," Toshiro Mifune. When I told her there was a movie starring the two of them I think she nearly exploded . . .

[Toshi]

Lee Marvin is a perennial favorite - especially love him in Prime Cut and Emperor of the North (both with amazing antagonists, Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine, respectively) and as a hired gun in the remake of The Killers. Point Blank is interesting, and Marvin is great as usual, but Boorman's experiments get tiresome pretty quickly. For a more bare-bones take on this kind of gangster revenge tale, check out The Outfit, with Robert Duvall in the Marvin role - the material comes from Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark), who also wrote Point Blank, and the story is virtually the same. It's a good indication of how filmmakers in the 70s did things a little differently than those in the 60s.

[Chris]

I think my favorite Point Blank scene is when Marvin casual walks down a hall, kicks an apartment door in and fires a few rounds into a bed.
Didn't Boorman say something like he wanted Marvin in that role (basically playing a dead man) because Lee lost part of his soul in the Pacific war?

[Katel]

My favorite Lee marvin films Point Blank
Cat Ballou
Dirty Dozen

and he surely creeped me out in Gorky Park

[Mr. Peel]

Viewing Point Blank at LACMA with Angie Dickinson seated directly in front of me, able to observe her reactions, remains one of my all-time favorite L.A. experiences. For a brief amount of time, L.A. really was what it seems in Point Blank. I love that film.

[Michael Ryerson]

I believe this is the film in which, in one scene, an angular and thoroughly delectable Chris (Angie Dickinson) changes clothes in the foreground, while, in the background, a dispassionate Walker (Lee Marvin) beats a man senseless. In the telling, the set-up seems contrived beyond redemption but in Boorman's sure hands it comes off near perfection, oozing alienation, juxtaposing two equally compelling images in the same frame and just letting the visual carry the scene without the slightest narrative assistance. What guts! Good, good movie. Marvin perfectly cast and at the top of his considerable talent. Dickinson is yummy and the balance of the cast is hardly challenged in what is essentially a minimalist exercise.