BREAKING POINT
Canada/US, 1976, 92 minutes, Colour.
Bo Svenson, Robert Culp, John Colicos, Belinda Montgomery, Linda Sorenson, Stephen Young.
Directed by Bob Clark.
Breaking Point is a common title for films and telemovies. This mid-70s version comes from Canada and focuses on a man who witnesses a beating which turns into a murder, is put into the witness protection program with his wife and family and who is threatened by the magnate who ordered the killing. He is the leader of a criminal gang in Philadelphia.
Bo Svenson is the witness – usually a tough customer in his films (especially his impersonation of Sheriff Buford Pusser in the Walking Tall films). John Colicos (often a villain but a good dramatic actor in such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice) is the boss, Robert Culp is in charge of the witness protection program.
The film capitalises on audience interest in the Mafia and the Mafia’s dealings with people in the films of the 1970s following the lead of The Godfather. Bob Clark is a Canadian director who began working in the 1960s, made a number of horror films in the 1970s including Black Christmas and Dead of Night but moved a bit more upmarket with his Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper story, Murder by Decree as well as Tribute with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. His films over succeeding decades were a mixture of the banal, the Porky’s films and some entertainments like A Christmas Story, Rhinestone and Turk 182.
1. The meaning of the title its focus for the themes and the characters? How real, authentic?
2. The atmosphere of violence in society in the 1970s? Vengeance, the police, personal and social justice and the demands for the persecuted individual?
3. How well did the film create atmosphere, the opening and the family life? Philadelphia, the Mafia the police, families? The transition to Toronto and its atmosphere? How particularly American was the film? How universal its. message?
4. Colour, music, editing, pace, atmosphere?
5. The initial situation and its brutality, audiences identified with Michael McBain? Hie choices to become involved or not? His evading the police, discussion with his wife, accepting the responsibility? The consequences of responsibility, especially the violence and the victimisation? Was it worth it? Considering the violence, changing the way of life, the deaths? Would the ordinary citizen have the courage to accept these consequences?
6. The background of Karbone: his city its name, the plans, the building? The Mafia? His orders, being under orders? His character, personality? The henchmen and their brutality? The atmosphere of terror, the rape of Sarah, the killings? Tracking the McBains? Did these henchmen and Karbone deserve their deaths?
7. The character of Mc Bain in himself, personality, his judo work, his physical strength? His bond with Andrew? With hie wife? Building up a new family? Relationship with Peter Stratis? Diana in the household? A modern American, type and family?
8. The presentation of his choices and his taking them ? The importance of the police protection in the prison, the closed court and the grand jury? Things leading to worse because of corruption and communication? Karbone’s wanting to make him suffer, to make him feel guilty? Questions of conscience? His vengeance in order to protect his family? The relationship of the police and their inability to do anything legal against Karbone?
9. The administration of Justice? Citizens' arrest and citizens’ violence? The presentation of the police, doing their best? mistakes and miscalculations, the feel for police work? Sirriani? His phoning about the fiancee's death etc.? A portrayal of the police in their ordinary work?
10. The portrait of corruption. people being paid, communicating and violence?
11. The terrorising of the wife, of Peter and Andrew and Peter being burnt? Peter and his relationship with the who1e family, meeting his son, his selfishness in going to seek his son and lead the trackers to the family? Diana and her relationship with her fiance, the happiness of their final scene, the brutality of his death and her grief?
12. The family's identity, the process, investigation? Their leaving, changing appearance? Was it inevitable that Andrew would ring?
13. The breaking point for all of them. for Michael? The film's ending and the future for him in terms of social justice?
14. The visual portrayal of the emotion of vengeance, the build-up to the car chase and its destruction, Mc Bain’s arriving at the party and threatening Karbone, the deaths of the two followers in a brutal breaking of the neck, the of the house and the killing of Karbone?
15. The abruptness of the ending and leaving it with the audience? What was right, what was wrong? The intellectual response to the film, the emotive?
