Cinema Dissection: Point Blank

September 28, 2025

Combining a classic hardboiled crime story with an expansive, visual style highly influenced by European New Wave filmmakers, director John Boorman delivered what has become a quintessential neo-noir. Lee Marvin stars as Walker, a low-level, hard-as-nails criminal whose partner just left him for dead and absconded with his cut of a $93,000 heist and Walker’s wife. Walker tracks his partner to Los Angeles seeking his cut of the loot—and vengeance, too—only to get entangled in the byzantine machinations of the Organization, a new kind of criminal syndicate more concerned with stocks and bonds than bullets, babes, or even cold, hard cash.

Join facilitator and SIFF Programmer Dan Doody on a scene-by-scene breakdown of this seminal L.A. crime story.

Ahead of this cinema dissection, Point Blank screens September 17 at SIFF Cinema Uptown as part of Greg Olson Productions L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise film series.

SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this event.

Tickets

Select showtime for pricing and tickets.

Sunday, September 28, 2025

SIFF Film Center

10:00 AM

CLASS SPECIFICS
Sunday, September 28, 2025
10:00am–4:00pm PT
SIFF Film Center
$30 Sustainer | $25 Regular | $20 Member

ABOUT CINEMA DISSECTION
Cinema Dissection affords film lovers an exciting opportunity to dig deeper into the films that they love. Inspired by Roger Ebert's annual Cinema Interruptus in Boulder, CO, attendees will participate with a facilitator in a six-hour scene-by-scene, and sometimes shot-by-shot, deconstruction of the featured film. While the facilitator will certainly share their thoughts, anyone in the audience may call out "Stop" and either ask a question of the group or make an observation around a certain shot or moment in the film.

Dan Doody

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
A Seattle-area native, Dan Doody received a degree in English from Western Washington University, and began working for the Seattle International Film Festival in 1999. He programs both features and short films for the festival, serving on the WTF! committee and as the festival's lead coordinator for its Oscar® qualifying ShortsFest section. He is an enthusiast of the gothic in both film and literature, the pagan-haunted pastorals found in English ghost stories, and the seedy streets of film noir. He could quite happily live in a crumbling castle so long as it was within walking distance of a neon-lit diner on a rain-slicked city boulevard.