The late 60's were very kind to Lee Marvin. After 15 years of playing supporting characters; usually some sort of a bad guy, Marvin was slowly starting to develop himself into a leading man. After a nice fat Oscar win for Cat Ballou (1965) in early 1966 that transformation was complete. Those small bit part days were long gone now. And, even large supporting roles seemed to be a thing of the past. Lee was a legitimate star now. After carrying really big studio pictures like The Professionals (1966) and The Dirty Dozen (1967), which was not too bad for a character actor, Lee met the man he was destined to make movies with, English filmmaker, John Boorman.John and Lee met in England while Lee was filming The Dirty Dozen. They struck an immediate friendship and started developing a movie together. And for those of you toiling in dreams of being a filmmaker, this is sort of a fairy tale for you. Boorman was not a famous director at the time. In fact, he wasn't even a cult director. He had only made two movies up to this point, and neither one was very good. And here he was drinking and developing a movie with one of the biggest movie stars in the world during the height of his career.
I don't know exactly how they went from just talking about a movie, to having MGM financing it and actually doing it less than a year later, but I'm just going to imagine Lee Marvin held some slimy executive head out the window by his feet until he agreed.
MGM did agree, though. We know that for sure. They put it out. And as you could imagine, Lee Marvin, fresh off filming The Dirty Dozen, had quite a bit juice at the time. So when he told MGM he defers all of his approvals to John Boorman, that's just the way it was. That actually happened. So what you had, essentially, is an unknown director, doing his first studio picture, and having today's equivalent of final cut. Unheard of. And what a good thing that was, because Boorman got to make what ended up being a highly experimental, studio funded, $3 million dollar art film, with one of the biggest movie stars in the world as his star. That movie was Point Blank.
Point Blank (1967). If you want a rough idea of what a hot streak Lee Marvin was on, here it is. The Dirty Dozen came out June of '67. Point Blank came out August of '67. In one summer, Marvin was in two movies that are cool enough to be the one highlight of anybody elses entire career. Point Blank is a movie that's been discussed in depth by people much smarter than me. Martin Scorsese devoted a whole piece of his Personal Journey through American Movies to it. On the surface level, Walker (Lee Marvin) is pissed off. And, he really, really wants his fucking money. That's it. And truthfully, that's really all you need. I mean, he's roaming around San Francisco, looking like a million bucks, with a .44 Magnum, 5 years before Dirty Harry, by the way, and if you get into his way, he's crushing your testicles without thinking twice about it. All while being this angel of death figure, leading people to horrible, unnatural deaths. He even fucks up a '67 Imperial Crown. I didn't know that was possible.
Normally, I don't like to dissect a badass revenge flick, and look for deeper meanings in it. But Point Blank sort of demands you to do so. And I'm certainly not the first to do so. What first appears to be your run of the mill, revenge movie, albeit, a particularly good one, because it's Lee Marvin who wants revenge, you soon see that it's more than that. The story is ultimately about corporate America. The money Walker is after is in some sort of crime organization that has legitimate business ties too, and it then becomes a story about man versus corporation, and ultimately a scathing criticism of corporate America. To Walker, it may only be personal, but for the viewer, it represents something much bigger. And that's what sets this movie apart from most of it's genre. It works on the surface as just a cool revenge flick, but it has something to say as well. And I'll delve into the themes more in depth in a future article.
Point Blank, to me, is the ultimate Lee Marvin movie. I think the Walker character embodies what the Lee Marvin onscreen persona had been working it's way up to. It was all put together here, and Point Blank is the snapshot of what that persona was. It's the "badass with a code," basically. That character that we've seen so many times since. It's always been interesting to me that Le Samorai and Point Blank came out the same year. "Badass with a code," could really be the synopsis of both of those films. And while samurai movies had been made for years, the basis of the badass with a code, this wasn't anything new per se, but it was in that sort of samurai code in contemporary times that was. So to have these two really influential movies come out less than two months apart, I don't know what it means, but I find it interesting. It's a lot more interesting than say a Dante's Peak/Volcano type of parallel thinking.
Hell in the Pacific (1968). One year later, Boorman and Marvin team up again. This time, with not as much control (the original ending was changed by the studio's urging). They did join forces with Toshirô Mifune, though, a legend in Japan for his work with Kurosawa, and badass in his own right. Now, I can't explain why, but I've been obsessed with being deserted since I was a little boy. It doesn't matter if it's a beach, or a forest, the thought of being stranded anywhere was always exciting to me. I love an apocalypse movie for the same reason. Could be the only child in me. As a result, I was also always fixated on any kind of deserted island movie. Bad or good. Didn't matter. They'll be something about it that I connect with. But, if you want to go out of your way and make a good deserted island movie, I'll be extra happy. Hell in the Pacific is one of the good ones.
To call it a "deserted island" movie isn't totally fair. It's more than that. But, they are deserted on an island. They do have to learn how to live off the land. So, what else does one call it? In this particular one, two men are stuck on an island. One is an American soldier. The other is a Japanese soldier. World War II is happening as they both sit on this island. They don't particularly like each other for obvious reasons. Due to language barriers they can't really communicate these feelings verbally. So, they instead choose to grunt, chase each other with sticks, fight, and attempt to kill each other on a daily basis. Real caveman shit. A beautiful thing happens, though. The two learn to coexist. It's lonely on a deserted island after all. It's tough enough to survive even without some other guy trying to kill you. The other guy is an asset. So the two mostly put a stupid thing like war to the back burner, and reluctantly help each other out. This is survival. And, oh my god, you might even make a friend in the process.
Hell in the Pacific is only a cast of two; Marvin and Mifune. And, it's the coolest thing in the world to watch these two act together. There's no Japanese subtitles for Mifune's dialogue, which is great. Marvin's character doesn't understand what he's saying, so neither do we. Yet, somehow, even with the language barrier, we have a pretty goddamn good idea what Mifune is saying. The interaction between these two is some of my favorite interaction of all time.
Unlike Point Blank, where I have no criticisms, I have one for Hell in the Pacific, and that's the ending. As I've already stated, that's not completely Boorman's fault. The studio, or producer, I forget which, hated the original ending, and made Boorman change it. The current ending isn't awful, though. The more I think about it, I've learned to accept the actual ending. It's not as good as what Boorman wanted, but for an ending that came from people in suits, it's not too bad. It does come out of left field, though, and might leave you with your "what the fuck was that?' face. And you'll wonder, "That was the studio ending? That abrupt weirdness?" It was. And even if you do hate the ending, it's only the last minute of the movie, and shouldn't totally negate the enjoyment level you got from 99% of the rest of it. Even the build up to that last moment is great.
Hell in the Pacific is just a great movie. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't get the respect of Point Blank. It wasn't as influential. But it is a movie that is contrained to a very specific genre, makes up for it with an original premise, and delivers in everything it tries to do.
Boorman and Marvin never worked together again. I don't know the reasons why. It saddens me that they didn't make a flick together in the 70's. With the progression of film in that decade, some of it due to them with people like Scorsese loving Point Blank, it would have been interesting to see their take during that decade. But we only got two films, and that's okay. They were great films after all. Two guys, making two great films, in two years. I can live with that.
Written sometime in 2007.
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