Blow Out (1981 Brian de Palma & scr)

Yes, it's The Conversation. Yes, it's Blow Up. But it's also a neat political conspiracy thriller, possibly with its origins in the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, in which Teddy Kennedy drove his car off a bridge at night and though he escaped, his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned (the opposite of what happens in this film).

I felt myself watching it fondly through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino - it's one of his favourite three films, with Rio Bravo and Taxi Driver - and so when some of the dialogue seems clunky, or the acting's questionable, or the script wanders (why does Lithgow kill the woman on the building site?) or the music is way over the top, it seems funny. (Donaggio's music mainly lets the film down, in all but its love theme.)

Someone goes to the trouble of wiping every tape in Travolta's apartment. You don't think it would have been much, much less trouble to just steal them all?

Definitely at its best in the recording scenes and the reconstructions of the 'accident', with a quite sneaky plot that allows the murderer to escape unpunished - written by de Palma.

With Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz. Paul Hirsch edited, Vilmos and Laszlo photographed.

Tarantino: "Travolta's performance in Blow Out has to be one of my favourite performances of all time, I think he's absolutely shattering in that movie. And to me, you have one of the most heart-breaking closing shots in the history of cinema... "