Point Blank follows a nurse named Paul, played by Anthony Mackie, who gets assigned to a career criminal named Abe, played by Frank Grillo, who’s injured from a botched gunshot wound during a getaway. Soon after, Paul is attacked in the hospital when someone tries to kill Abe, which leads to Abe’s brother Mateo, played by Christian Cooke, to kidnap Paul’s heavily pregnant wife Taryn, played by Teyonah Parris, and the only way to let her go will be for Paul to get Abe out of safety. This lead to Paul and Abe teaming up an uncovering a much larger plot in the criminal underworld.
This film is not a remake of the 1967 thriller of the same name, starring Lee Marvin, but rather a remake of the 2010 French film of the same name, that has no connection to the 1967 film. Attempting to recreate the feel of the 1980’s buddy cop formula - without any actual cops as the heroes - this movie attempts to be a subversive take on the genre but is about as by-the-numbers as it can get. Everything about this movie is pretty easy to call about a mile away.
There’s a plot twist revealed early on in the film that is somewhat interesting and could have led to some excellent social commentary, but the film chooses to waste the opportunity and instead head toward fairly predictable territory. Paul is someone way over his head despite being fairly competent at taking on criminals while Abe knows the intricacies of the situations they’re dealing with and has to lead the way. They don’t get along at first, and spend most of the movie bickering and arguing, while there are the occasional cuts to the villain who seemingly has no real motivation for any of their actions but is still this force to be reckoned with.
Despite the film being only 90 minutes, there are moments in which it feels dragged out, due to the fact that there are a fair amount of moments that don’t necessarily feel relevant to the plot. These characters argue, really for on reason at times, other than for the sake of drawing things out. There is nothing remotely interesting about any of them. They are simply pawns in the movie’s screenplay that move around because that’s what the story calls for or create conflict simply because it’s forced by the screenplay. These characters are completely one-dimensional.
And if the characters don’t argue for the sake of forcing tension, it’ll be for the sake of a joke. But what’s aggravating about this is the fact that most of the jokes simply aren’t funny. Outside of a handful of standout moments, they are simply tired retreads of familiar setups that have been done in countless other movies. There are moments where one can look away for an extended period of time and not really have missed much once tuning back in.
It’s a shame too, as the cast looks like they enjoyed themselves while making this, and at the very least, have a good energy about them, despite the fact that their characters are completely bland. Unlike most other movies that are as generic as this, the acting is actually pretty solid, and is quite possibly the only redeeming quality about this film. Mackie and Grillo do handle what they have to work with well, with Mackie seemingly game for just about anything thrown his way, while Grillo works well in what’s almost this parody of nearly all his other roles. While they do seem to have some solid chemistry together, the material they have is completely stale, and despite the fun they seem to have, they have a difficult time getting the audience to do the same.
Point Blank is a pointless remake. While it has some fun performances from both Mackie and Grillo, they have almost nothing substantial to work with. This film is about as generic as it can get, with flipping a few aspects of the buddy cop genre around but never actually doing anything memorable beyond some role reversals. The characters lack a distinct personality, the action is so-so, and the film drags itself out with pointless arguing and jokes that simply don’t work. There have been much better films that handled this sort of material and there are sure to be many more movies to come that will also outshine this one.
Recommendation: Avoid It
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