Where Antonioni's images made you think, De Palma's merely make you blink, and the baroque plot confuses as often as it frightens.
Comment
06/24/06
Blow Out (1981)
89
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:36
Fresh:32
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.5/10
Consensus: With a story inspired by Antonioni's Blow Up and a style informed by the high-gloss suspense of Hitchcock, DePalma's Blow Out is raw, politically informed, and littered with film references.
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: While outdoors recording sound effects for a movie, audio technician Jack Terri hears a tire blowout and a car crash. Before the car sinks into the river, he manages to save the female passenger... [More]
Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz
Director: Brian De Palma
Get This Movie
Reviews for Blow Out
Much less successful than it could and should have been.
08/28/01
With attractive leads and a stylish flair for suspense, De Palma misses sustaining involvement by his distracting allusions to prior films.
03/26/09
An homage to Blow Up that far outstrips the original in emotional immediacy, political sophistication, and visual style.
03/27/09
There are some neat performances, particularly Travolta's convincing bid to be taken seriously after years of being dismissed as frivolous beefcake.
03/27/09
Brian DePalma's masterpiece, a wonderful movie.
01/27/04
Underrated by just about everyone except Quentin Tarantino.
01/01/00
A well-crafted Hitchcockian-style thriller with De Palma again in top form. It's a mystery why this fizzled at the box office in the summer of 1981.
01/24/06
No review available.
01/20/08
...Blow Out is one of Brian DePalma's best films.
09/26/02
It's an effective film mostly because it has a sense of humor and Travolta is convincing as the unlikely hero fighting against political corruption.
01/01/00
A triumph of both style and substance.
01/01/00
No review available.
07/24/05
Intriguing DePalma thriller
10/17/02
Of all De Palma's movies, Blow Out is the one I most like to see over and over.
10/06/04
Brian De Palma’s movies are a stunningly uneven lot, but that might just be because he takes as many risks as he does.
03/05/02
No review available.
08/01/02
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.
03/27/09
Top CriticRT On Current TV
What’s Hot On RT
Fresh Links
Featured
Best Dozen of the Decade 
Last week, MSN gave us their top 09 films. Now see what their favorites of the decade are!
Top 50 of 2009
Here's a list of the 50 best movies of 2009, according to the good people over at Moviefone.
Santa's Naughty List
Hollywood.com takes a stab at determining who in movies will be on Santa's naughty list in 2009.
Top 10 Movies of 2009
TIME chimes in with their own list of the best films released this year.
Top 20 of the Decade
Click through to see which movies BuzzSugar placed in their Best-of-Decade list!
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter
Get the latest Tomatometer updates on upcoming movies!
RSS Feeds