Blow outThey say seeing is believing, but that also holds true for the other senses, especially the sense of sound. What we hear paints a picture in the mind's eye. It is the window to the imagination, but it is also the structural support for the events we witness, the cement which binds our memory. It is the evidence that what we see is not just a trick of the light or some kind of figment; what we hear is just as real. And for sound engineer Jack Terry (John Travolta), hearing is believing, even when the forces of the government and its shadowy agents try to erase the inconvenient truth of his evidence to the contrary.
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Blow Out is a suspenseful thriller by Brian De Palma, whose stylistic flourishes and stories often recall Alfred Hitchcock. This film is no exception, although it is fundamentally an adaptation of Michelangelo Antonioni's film, Blowup. In both films, a young man accidentally documents an event which draws him further into a labyrinth of complex deception and even conspiracy, more so for Blow Out's Jack Terry (John Travolta). Jack is a sound engineer, whose current situation is producing audio for a schlocky horror flick, a job which he never relishes, but seems more condemned to do. Even from the deceptive prologue, designed to resemble a "dead teenager" horror movie, the camera is the eye of the killer, voyeuristic and deadly, if exaggerated for darkly comic effect. It is in his pursuit of capturing audio on a bridge one night that he just happens to be present when a car plummets into the river, and Jack leaps into the water, saving the surviving passenger, a young woman named Sally (Nancy Allen). Following an unusual interrogation and request by the political friend of the late governor--the less fortunate passenger of the ill-fated vehicle--Jack becomes increasingly suspicious that the events he recorded contained sensitive, even dangerous evidence which points to the purported "blow out" being more than an accident. Jack soon finds himself the target of a deadly cover-up exacted by the deadly agent, Burke (John Lithgow), whose methods are not constrained in the slightest by morality or conscience. In short order, Jack and Sally find themselves both hunted in varied ways, targets under scrutiny and surveillance themselves, their lives crashing down, simply because they happened to witness something the powers that be have determined they should not have.
Blow Out is set in Philadelphia, amid the centennial celebration for the last ringing of the Liberty Bell. The presence of government as an indifferent, external force is ubiquitous in the film, from the coverage of governor as a likely presidential successor on the news, to Burke's brand of smoothing over of the governmental involvement in the car crash which claimed said governor's life. Burke represents America's fears of a government which not only doesn't care about the people, but considers them expendable pawns in maintaining the status quo. Filmed only years after the Watergate scandal, Blow Out maintains a cynical edge toward the government, still manifest today in contemporary examples (such as Hillary Clinton and Benghazi), and this is manifest in Jack, whose past reveals that he had once lent his talents toward uncovering police corruption, but abandoned this effort following a tragic oversight on his part. In a sense, Jack's efforts for the small-time grindhouse producer is one of self-abasement, a punishment he inflicts upon himself for his failures, a feeling made all too horrifyingly evident at the conclusion of the film. Echoes of "people versus government" conflicts emerge in subtle ways, sharper today than ever. Burke's interference with Jack's phone and his disguise as a representative of the phone company is now like a prelude to post-PRISM America, where the government is always listening to phones, a secret they were more than comfortable to keep from the public until revealed by Edward Snowden, even today a target of our administration. "They" is the most significant word in the conspiracy theorist's vocabulary, and Jack is well aware of it. Whether Jack is actively motivating Sally to retrieve the raw film of the car crash from her fellow blackmailer, Manny (Dennis Franz), to reinforce his story for his own justification or her safety is debatable, but for Jack, he understands that only by combining that footage with his audio will the evidence speak for itself.
Blow Out readily observes the more overt parallels between its plot and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Manny describes the film footage he shot as being "bigger than the Zapruder film", and the governor is in fact killed while in a car by a gunman on, basically, a "grassy knoll". Even as Jack is recording the sounds from up on the bridge, his microphone is pointed like the barrel of a sniper rifle. The sense that there is a tragic outcome for the governor is foreshadowed earlier as he is being filmed at a benefit, while Jack is at home going through his audio files, which include--in order--the sound of shattered glass, a gun shot, and a body hitting the ground. Blow Out is a dark movie, and not just in tone and content; the majority of the film was filmed at night, where the faintest trickles of light cast long shadows. Jack records the crash at night, with the sounds of owls hooting and frogs croaking, and Burke commits his murders to deflect the public's attention from the governor's demise with his stealthy garrote amid the neon grime of a construction site, where only vestiges of light illuminate the shadowy assassin as he carries out his wetwork. And of course, as the terrifying climax reaches a crescendo, it is by the light of patriotic fireworks, and the spotlight on an oversized, billowing American flag, that the dark resolution of Blow Out is heralded, accompanied by the grim recording Jack's surveillance leaves behind. Blow Out feels like a tragedy for a multitude of reasons, but throughout it is because there is the persistent sense that it is a portrait of a world where truth is a liability, and liberty is an illusion. It is an ironically patriotic film, because it recalls the values espoused by the founding fathers of these United States, and how the tyranny of a government which is not ruled by the people is a threat as dangerous as a killer in the darkness, the telltale sound of his approach only identified too late.
Recommended for: Fans of a thrilling and clever suspense film about everything from the technicality of audio recording, conspiracy, and even American values. It is both thought-provoking and emotionally stirring, the theme music sure to pluck at your heart strings, and a reminder that hearing is believing, and not to doubt one's senses when the evidence supports them.
Blow Out is set in Philadelphia, amid the centennial celebration for the last ringing of the Liberty Bell. The presence of government as an indifferent, external force is ubiquitous in the film, from the coverage of governor as a likely presidential successor on the news, to Burke's brand of smoothing over of the governmental involvement in the car crash which claimed said governor's life. Burke represents America's fears of a government which not only doesn't care about the people, but considers them expendable pawns in maintaining the status quo. Filmed only years after the Watergate scandal, Blow Out maintains a cynical edge toward the government, still manifest today in contemporary examples (such as Hillary Clinton and Benghazi), and this is manifest in Jack, whose past reveals that he had once lent his talents toward uncovering police corruption, but abandoned this effort following a tragic oversight on his part. In a sense, Jack's efforts for the small-time grindhouse producer is one of self-abasement, a punishment he inflicts upon himself for his failures, a feeling made all too horrifyingly evident at the conclusion of the film. Echoes of "people versus government" conflicts emerge in subtle ways, sharper today than ever. Burke's interference with Jack's phone and his disguise as a representative of the phone company is now like a prelude to post-PRISM America, where the government is always listening to phones, a secret they were more than comfortable to keep from the public until revealed by Edward Snowden, even today a target of our administration. "They" is the most significant word in the conspiracy theorist's vocabulary, and Jack is well aware of it. Whether Jack is actively motivating Sally to retrieve the raw film of the car crash from her fellow blackmailer, Manny (Dennis Franz), to reinforce his story for his own justification or her safety is debatable, but for Jack, he understands that only by combining that footage with his audio will the evidence speak for itself.
Blow Out readily observes the more overt parallels between its plot and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Manny describes the film footage he shot as being "bigger than the Zapruder film", and the governor is in fact killed while in a car by a gunman on, basically, a "grassy knoll". Even as Jack is recording the sounds from up on the bridge, his microphone is pointed like the barrel of a sniper rifle. The sense that there is a tragic outcome for the governor is foreshadowed earlier as he is being filmed at a benefit, while Jack is at home going through his audio files, which include--in order--the sound of shattered glass, a gun shot, and a body hitting the ground. Blow Out is a dark movie, and not just in tone and content; the majority of the film was filmed at night, where the faintest trickles of light cast long shadows. Jack records the crash at night, with the sounds of owls hooting and frogs croaking, and Burke commits his murders to deflect the public's attention from the governor's demise with his stealthy garrote amid the neon grime of a construction site, where only vestiges of light illuminate the shadowy assassin as he carries out his wetwork. And of course, as the terrifying climax reaches a crescendo, it is by the light of patriotic fireworks, and the spotlight on an oversized, billowing American flag, that the dark resolution of Blow Out is heralded, accompanied by the grim recording Jack's surveillance leaves behind. Blow Out feels like a tragedy for a multitude of reasons, but throughout it is because there is the persistent sense that it is a portrait of a world where truth is a liability, and liberty is an illusion. It is an ironically patriotic film, because it recalls the values espoused by the founding fathers of these United States, and how the tyranny of a government which is not ruled by the people is a threat as dangerous as a killer in the darkness, the telltale sound of his approach only identified too late.
Recommended for: Fans of a thrilling and clever suspense film about everything from the technicality of audio recording, conspiracy, and even American values. It is both thought-provoking and emotionally stirring, the theme music sure to pluck at your heart strings, and a reminder that hearing is believing, and not to doubt one's senses when the evidence supports them.