What Happens At The Ending Of Point Blank?

Question

Just finished the last chapter of Point Blank and I'm utterly floored – did I interpret that final confrontation correctly, or were there hidden details I might have missed?

Mane Neho · Answer

I haven't read this one, but I'll try to be helpful. Typically, thriller novels have the main character (or the protagonist) expose a massive conspiracy, or have an all out violent fight with the main bad guy. Right now, I’m reading After the Breaking Point. The whole story builds up to this one point where the main character has to decide whether to take down a corrupt system in public or bring it down from within. It’s really tense and character-driven at the end.

Gavin · Answer

It was a sweet ending to a very hard fought battle for Paul. Getting to team up with another injured and ‘screwed over’ by the System, Mateo, to have an ambush in a hospital full of innocent people was just amazing. All that build up and it was a very ‘ugly’ action scene, tons of gunfire, lots of desperation. In the end, Paul shot the main antagonist to death in cold blood and it was NOT glamorous or heroic in any way. Then the movie just cut to black as Paul was lost in the concrete canyons of the city, a mere specter of violence, perpetuating a cycle of violence that would never end. The lack of closure was actually kind of awesome.

Victoria · Answer

This film is kind of a flop for me because even though Paul gets to have his revenge, the price he pays for it is way too steep. The rest of his family is threatened and the guy is now a murderer. We see him walking down a street alone in the final shot of the film. It is a really somber scene and there is no music or anything to signal that the movie is over. It’s so different from other action films where the hero gets to ride off into the sunset at the end of the film. In Point Blank, the sunset is long over before the movie even begins.

What is interesting is how this film subverts your expectations of a ‘clear his name’ style of action thriller. Although the corrupt police are given what they deserve, Paul’s victory is empty. Even Mateo, who is probably the only ally that Paul has managed to procure, escapes for no reason. The film is a thought-provoking insight into the ambiguity of seeking justice and I wonder if it was all worth it.

Wesley · Answer

The ending of ‘Point Blank’ is as brutal as it is abrupt. After having gone through a bloody and ruthless slaughter of innocent people, Paul gets to walk away from the carnage, covered in someone else’s blood. There’s no happy ending with his wife who’s about to give birth to their child, nor do we get to see any of the police to have been affected by his unearthing of corruption celebrate with him. Instead, we see him walk off into the distance, a tragic figure, and the audience is left wondering whether or not he’s really been set free from his prison. The third act of ‘Point Blank’ is a real sprint – with no time to catch one’s breath – and then, just like that, it’s all over. No epilogue is offered to us to calm our nerves and make us feel assured of the main character’s future.

Yazmin · Answer

'Point Blank' is a really gritty film and the end was really painful to watch. In the end Paul gets to have his revenge on the 2 corrupt police that framed him. But it wasn’t a nice triumphant sort of ending. No, it was very messy and very violent and by the end of it Paul was left a shattered wreck of a man. In the last shot of Paul he is walking off into the distance, covered in blood but there is no relief in his eyes. Instead he looks utterly exhausted and defeated. The film is saying that revenge doesn’t bring any solution to anything and just leaves you feeling emptier than you did before.

The moral aspects of Paul’s actions and those of the police are very ambiguously portrayed. The ending of the film leaves us to ponder whether Paul has done anything different to the way the police have acted. The director doesn’t look to solve all the problems he has set up in the film and give a very moral ending. It’s pretty raw and pretty much as you’re left with the feelings of discomfort and angst that you felt for most of the film. I love that sort of ending.

Pamela Moore · Answer

For me the book climaxes better than the movie. The movie is stylish and all but the novel’s end on location at a movie set is a masterpiece of meta-commentary. The most realistic and brutal force in the world acts in a world completely of fiction (actor’s, sets etc. for starter’s). He turns their pretend violence into real. Sooner or later in their pretend world of make-believe they will need to be terminated. All in the name of cash and revenge. A mean revenge. He pulls off his hits (one of them in particular) with cold, calculating precision. His final revenge isn’t just about stealing a load of cash. The film kind of shrugs off his revenge in a sort of philosophical musing. But no, his endgame is about style. About making murder look like an accident. That’s what’s so fulfilling about the book.

juhig4704 · Answer

This ending has a lot of cultural significance. You can see it in video games like ‘Max Payne’ and its hardboiled, noir-like dialogue, or even in some of Christopher Nolan’s non-linear storytelling. That empty room where the money was to be found? That’s a very powerful shot of cinema. It signifies that the object of desire has gone, possibly it was never there to begin with. The film is attacking an empty form of materialism and the means in which we go about trying to satiate our wants in a super-consumerist culture. It’s a really modern film for its era, especially given its abstractness. Rather than spoon-feeding the audience and treating them like children, it challenges them to watch the film and to find out their own answers. As a result, there’s been a huge amount of analysis from film students and film critics alike, ever since the film came out decades ago.

_Laramie_ · Answer

The final scenes of Point Blank are rendered by the soundtrack in a rather ingenious absence. There’s no music – no crashing crescendo of triumphant tones to tell the audience how to feel. Instead we’re left with the diegetic sounds of the scenes as they unfold: the hum of the office; the sounds of the distant city; the echoes off the walls of Alcatraz. And then silence. This vacuum is what allows the images and the performances to wash over us unmediated, and to instill in us a sense of unease and discomfort of the greatest order. While most films rely on the soundtrack to guide the emotions of the audience, and give them to understand what it is that they are supposed to be feeling in the film’s climax, Point Blank has stripped away this comfort zone, and left us feeling bereft and lost. Is this the end of a great adventure? Has our hero achieved his goal? Or is this all just some wild and potentially harmful fantasy? We are refused any musical cue as to how to respond to these final scenes. Instead we are forced to sit with our own feelings of uncertainty and of unease, and to decide for ourselves whether or not what we’ve just witnessed constitutes a victory, a defeat, or simply a dream. This is a bold and confident choice, the sort of thing that very few filmmakers would have the courage to do these days. The ending of Point Blank is all about what’s not been given to us, and that silence is the best embodiment of that.

Tajwar Fatima · Answer

In short, the ending of Memento is like a Rorschach test: Some see a ghost story, Walker having died on Alcatraz and the rest of the movie being a search for closure on his part. Others see a psychological study of a man who has created a fantasy in order to feel powerful. And then there’s my take: that the movie is commenting on the dehumanizing effects of modern architecture and large corporations. To Walker, The Organization is made up of buildings. And to him, his personal vendetta is minuscule compared to the monolith that is the company. By having him walk away from all that money, the movie shows that Walker has come to realize the emptiness of his search for revenge. But, as is the case with most things, the ending is left open to interpretation. None of the readings are confirmed, and the movie is left to sit on the shelf, as perplexing and brilliant as ever. It’s a stark and minimalist canvas, waiting for the viewer to project their own interpretation upon it.

William Gordon · Answer

This silence or sparse dialogue of sound in the ending scenes of film is a character in itself. The ending scenes follow a very long and loud ending of the film with car chases and fights throughout. Yet in the ending scenes of the film in the office of the prison on Alcatraz Island there is almost no sound of dialogue. Instead the audiences are overpowered by the sound of the office of the building of the prison and later the empty corridors of the cells of the prison. The sound of Walker’s footsteps in the corridors of the empty cells is heard for a time and then it too fades into nothing. The film itself is dissolving and Walker’s reality too is unraveling before our eyes in a deeply unsettling way. This is pure cinema.

Rokeya · Answer

In practical terms, read the Stark novel and then watch the Boorman film. They’re two different answers to the same question. The end of the novel is that of a craftsman: precise, functional, definitive. The end of the film is that of a poet: evocative, open to your own interpretation, and extremely moving. In terms of which is better, that really is a matter for you to decide depending on what you want from a story: conclusive resolution or a rich and provocative atmosphere. For me, the two versions are essential in order to fully appreciate the genius of the premise of the novel. The film is not an adaptation of the novel, it’s a completely different work that uses the same premise.

Ethne Basson · Answer

The setting is crucial to both endings. In The Punisher, the ending of the book takes place in the phony world of Hollywood, a world of make-believe, before Parker goes off into the real world in anonymous and unremarkable circumstances. There, he had used the world of make-believe to achieve reality, and then disappeared into it. In The Mechanic, the ending takes place in the sterile offices of a modern corporate structure, and then Walker returns to the deserted and symbolic world of Alcatraz where he is to remain, left behind in the real world and trapped in a world of memory. The two settings are almost reversed, but both function to isolate the main character. The facade of the world of make-believe which the characters in each story use in different ways is that of a tomb. The meaning of the ending is inextricably tied to the setting in which it takes place. The setting is not just background, it is a comment on the main character’s situation at the end of the story. In The Punisher, the main character is a manipulator of fiction, in The Mechanic, he is a prisoner of the past.

Amanda Clore-Gilbe · Answer

Unlike most movies these days, there is no sequel hook at the end of Point Blank. Parker’s journey continues in the novel, but in the film, after the events of the movie, he drives off into the sunset, maybe to disappear forever into some mythical region or perhaps he’s been driven mad by his revenge. Either way, it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing a sequel. The movie is a self contained, complete artistic thought on the topics of revenge, obsession, and the role that capitalism plays in our lives. There’s no need for a sequel or a Part Two, because the movie has said everything that it needed to say. And then, it’s over. We’re left to sit with the movie for a while after it’s finished, but we’re not given any more. The ending is complete and has finality, even if Parker’s life is left in doubt.

What Happens At The Ending Of Point Blank?

13 Antworten

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