Point Blank. Johnny Mandel

Mal Reese (John Vernon) is in a real bind--owing a good deal of money to his organized crime bosses--and gets his friend Walker (Lee Marvin) to join him in a heist. It goes off without a hitch, but when Reese realizes the take isn't as large as he had hoped, he kills Walker--or so he thinks. Some time later, Walker decides it's time to get his share of the money and starts with his ex-wife Lynne (Sharon Acker), who took up with Reese after the shooting. That leads him on a trail to his wife's sister Chris (Angie Dickinson), to Reese himself, then onto Big Stegman (Michael Strong), then Frederick Carter (Lloyd Bochner), then up the line of gangsters in an effort to get money from people who simply won't acknowledge that they owe him anything.

Scoring Point Blank was for Johnny Mandel, a widely acclaimed composer and arranger, a singular achievement. He uses the twelve-tone system of atonal composition not for shocks but for emotion in the style of Alban Berg, creating a type of trance-like cage in which Walker mechanically but artfully tears through the underworld. Combined with chamber-style accompaniments particularly for woodwinds -a Mandel trademark- and gorgeous, tonal variations for Walker's romantic relationships, the score has virtually no peers.