Last night I watched Point Blank for the first time. I liked
the movie, but it seems to me the character of Walker as
played by Lee Marvin is a far cry from Westlake's Parker.
Walker is very much a haunted figure, who, at times, seems
uncertain of what he's doing, and why he's doing it. From the
couple of Parker novels I've read (I've never run across a
copy of The Hunter), it seems like Parker is never troubled
by any sort of doubts. He is a totally amoral professional
who steals because it's what he does. He never seems troubled
by his career choice, or the use of violence. His stoicism
and force of character (even if it's bad character) are part
of his charm. I think Point Blank managed to lose that aspect
of the character.
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say
that the Parker character as played by Mel Gibson in Payback
came a lot closer to Westlake's Parker than Marvin's
character did. (On a related note, in the DVD commentary
director John Boorman said the original script for Point
Blank, which both he and Marvin hated, was a lot like the
script of Payback.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 22 Jul 2007 EDT