Le Point de non-retour

John Boorman's fabulous, fractured 1967 thriller is a key link between vintage noir and the great paranoid conspiracy films of the 1970s. Lee Marvin gives a slam-bang performance as Walker, a hard-nosed hoodlum double-crossed by his confederates after a daring heist: he's shot point-blank and left for dead. Walker survives the assault (or does he?) and sets out to exact revenge. Boorman's expressive, rhythmic film, informed by the European experiments of Resnais and Godard, and subverting linear time with its complex flashbacks and flashforwards, is both a terrific (and terrifically violent) thriller and, perhaps, a dazzling, dreamy evocation of consciousness.