Video News : Review

*** 1/2 “Point Blank.”

MGM/UA . $79.95.

Irresistible rage; immovable object. A haunted, doomed, hard guy (Lee Marvin, at his best), shot down during an Alcatraz robbery, tracks down his betrayers mercilessly, inexorably--through gleaming L.A. offices, vast white storm drains, sterile penthouses, hillside bungalows--only to find that his enemies are faceless, unaccountable, buried within the recesses of a huge, impersonal organization. This movie plays like some weird mixture of Kafka and Jim Thompson, Alain Resnais and Don Siegel (“L’Annee Derniere avec les Killers”?) , and back in 1967, many critics were bewildered by it. It’s an obvious morality play: five years before “The Godfather,” it posits that big business and big crime are identical in their methods. It’s also a dreamy rumination on anomie, film noir, modern architecture, vendettas and the links between desire and death. Director John Boorman fills it with haunting, unforgettable, often astonishing images. (Wide screen, cropped.)