Blow Out (1981)

John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a guy who records sound effects for low budget movies. While recording wind sounds for a film he's working on, he captures audio of an auto accident involving presidential candidate Governor McRyan. After saving a woman from his car submerged in the creek, he examines the tapes and finds it wasn't an accident, but an assassination. This revelation ends up putting both of their lives at risk.

I remember seeing this once as a kid and really liking it. I found it used for $4.00 and seemed to remember there being a Criterion release of this, so I picked it up. It's one of the better DePalma movies I've seen. Often there's something cheesy and dated about his films that drag them down, but this one didn't seem to suffer from that. This is a stylized thriller, almost Hitchcock-like, with an interesting premise, decent pacing and acting. Travolta delivers one of his least annoying performances in this and John Lithgow, surprisingly, is quite believable as the killer. A young (and thin) Dennis Franz is great as a sleazy, cigar-chomping photographer, giving the best performance of the film. Best of all , there were many technical shots of film and sound editing throughout the film. One of the aerial shots of Travolta at work, surrounded by tape machines stood out to me as the best scene in the film.

While it didnt occour to me until much later, my wife spotted the ending from the very beginning. It was effective, nonetheless, and wrapped it all together nicely. Other than Nancy Allen's mush-mouthed dialogue being utterly indecipherable through the first half of the film, there's very little to complain about. If you've never seen this or even if it's been a while, it's worth revisiting.

3.5/5