Blow Out

Directed by Brian De Palma, Blow Out follows a sound technician (John Travolta’s Jack Terry) as he inadvertently captures audio of a senator’s murder and is subsequently drawn into a deadly conspiracy. Filmmaker De Palma, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a mostly stellar endeavor that benefits from its compelling subject matter, sterling performances, and smattering of absolutely electrifying sequences, and there’s little doubt, in terms of the latter, that De Palma, along with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, does a terrific job of injecting seemingly simple sequences with an impossible-to-resist heightened sense of style. (There is, for example, a mesmerizing interlude wherein De Palma’s camera continuously circles the room in which Travolta’s figure is attempting to find something.) And while the movie’s midsection admittedly does contain a small handful of lulls, including a fairly needless digression detailing an encounter between Dennis Franz and Nancy Allen’s respective characters, Blow Out builds towards an exciting third act that’s capped off with an incredibly memorable (and almost impressively bleak) final few minutes – which ultimately secures its place as both a superior ’80s thriller and one of De Palma’s very best pictures.

***1/2 out of ****