Blow Out
Filmways Pictures | Release Date: July 24, 1981 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Travolta gives a sensitive performance, as does the director's then-wife Nancy Allen. The film's emphasis on the role of sound technology in movie-making is unusual and instructive. Read full review
100
IndieWireMax O'Connell
Mixing the hooks of Antonioni’s Blow-Up (murder mystery caught via photograph) and Coppola’s The Conversation (murder plot uncovered via sound recording), De Palma made his best film about the power and the limits of film and voyeurism, as well as his most emotionally devastating work. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Best of all, this movie is inhabited by a real cinematic intelligence. The audience isn't condescended to. In sequences like the one in which Travolta reconstructs a film and sound record of the accident, we're challenged and stimulated: We share the excitement of figuring out how things develop and unfold, when so often the movies only need us as passive witnesses. Read full review
100
The GuardianPhilip French
This is one of the finest films about the process of movie-making, a bleak, complex work that gives Travolta his most challenging role. Read full review
100
Slant MagazinePaul Schrodt
Blow Out is not known as one of Brian De Palma’s horror movies, but of all his films, it’s the one that feels most like a nightmare. Read full review
100
The New YorkerPauline Kael
On paper this movie, written and directed by Brian De Palma, might seem to be just a political thriller, but it has a rap intensity that makes it unlike any other political thriller...It’s a great movie. Read full review
91
The Film StageJordan Raup
A conspiracy thriller as euphorically entertaining as it is devastatingly bleak. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris Nashawaty
Deliciously twisty and twisted. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
This 1981 release is one of Brian De Palma's more interesting and better-made thrillers, though it's even more abjectly derivative than his Hitchcock imitations (borrowing mightily this time from Antonioni's Blowup, as the title suggests). Read full review
80
The New York TimesVincent Canby
Yet more important than anything else about Blow Out is its total, complete and utter preoccupation with film itself as a medium in which, as Mr. De Palma has said along with a number of other people, style really is content. Read full review
80
EmpireMark Dinning
Crammed with wonderful De Palma showboating and a wonderfully crackpot turn from John Lithgow as a right-wing loon. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonStaff (Not Credited)
Where Antonioni's images made you think, De Palma's merely make you blink, and the baroque plot confuses as often as it frightens. Still, plenty of style, a modicum of thrills, and a suitably s(l)ick ending. Collectors of character performances will enjoy Lithgow's right-wing nut. Read full review
80
Washington PostMichael Schrage
Playing with and making fun of paranoia is a DePalma specialty and he does it well. There are some very chilling touches in Blow Out. It's a good solid movie -- but it won't blow you away. [24 July 1981, p.D1]
60
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Writer-director Brian De Palma's Blow Out is a frequently exciting $18 million suspense thriller which suffers from a distracting emphasis upon homages to other motion pictures. Read full review
50
NewsweekDavid Ansen
De Palma has brought back Travolta's edge and intelligence. Relieved of having to give a star turn, Travolta seems happy to buckle down and do a straight-ahead, no-frills acting job. [27 July 1981, p.74]
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