Friday 4 May 2018

Retro Review: Point Blank (1998)

Point Blank
1998
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Danny Trejo, Kevin Gage, James Gammon, Frederic Forrest, Paul Ben-Victor
Genre: Direct To Video

Plot: Seeking his criminal brother, a former Texas ranger confronts escaped convicts besieging a mall





'Firing Blanks'

A late '90s Die Hard action clone movie, Point Blank follows similarly to another festive-based flick, Christmas Rush starring Dean Cain and Eric Roberts.

I saw this film after I stumbled upon it as a recommendation by a guy named Justin LaLiberty on Rupert Pupkin Speaks Underrated 1998 post of his blog, and suffice to say, it's okay but rather middling also. 

The film takes place in Fort Worth, Dallas where a bunch of innocent people are held hostage by a group of terrorists led by a madman of sorts and the lone hero comes and saves the day. Rourke plays ex-cop & mercenary, Rudy Ray, whose brother is the gang member of villains who take over a shopping mall and they are made up of escaped convicts. 

The scenes with the villains talking were mind-numbingly bland, the main bad guy is a gay stereotype, who is very flamboyant, Mickey Rourke doing backflips - or is that his stunt double?; in one scene, there is what appears to be stunt guy double doing a roundhouse kick. Yet the film itself is generic and the plot is straightforward to follow. Rourke himself makes for an all right hero, as ripped, sweaty and looking very orange and he does show his badassery on a few occasions, although there aren't as many hits and kills in an action film that I've come to expect. & although many will be happy to see the female victim character not getting together with Rourke in a romantic sense, I felt her role was so minimal she did little in this movie, but to utter a few lines of dialogue. I thought Danny Trejo was a tall, huge guy so it was to my surprise to see him as tall as Rourke at 5.6''. Point Blank, despite one or two scenes, feels more of a slapdash effort, although I'd still take this over Breakaway.


There are explosions and gunfire, it's all very macho with homophobic words being unfortunately spouted and the music is not great to listen to, although the action is okay at best and good for a straight- to- DVD film. The rest isn't much to ponder. Point Blank is a low budget mash-up of Die Hard and Con Air - 2 action movies which did it exceedingly better. 







Final Verdict:

As I mentioned it's all right by me, but one I can easily pass up on and in doing so, I wouldn't miss much. At all. 



Overall:


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