Blow Out (1981) * * *

Directed by:  Brian DePalma

Starring:  John Travolta, Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz, John Lithgow, Curt May

Sound effects man Jack Terry (Travolta), who works on sound for low budget B-movies, is recording outdoor sounds late one night when a car crossing a bridge blows out a tire and plunges into a creek.  Jack saves the woman in the car, but not the driver, who turns out to a state representative tapped to be a future political candidate.  The official story is that of an unfortunate accident, but Jack suspects there's more, especially after listening to the recordings Jack captured of the event.  

Jack repeats his listening obsessively and is convinced that the tire was shot out, which caused the crash.  Sally (Allen), the woman in the car, was a hooker paid to get close to the candidate by the anonymous people who also hired assassin Burke (Lithgow), to shoot out the tire to make it look like a blowout.  While we see Burke talking to his benefactors and planning his next move to kill Sally, Jack starts to sound like a conspiracy theorist when everyone else wants the book closed.  

Travolta and Allen previously teamed with director Brian DePalma in Carrie (1976) and once again they create a terrifying story with ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations.  Jack cares for Sally and wants to protect her, but at the same time, he wants to prove he's right, so he uses Sally as bait to draw out Burke.  This is dangerous for both, of course, because Burke is smart and competent, using words like utilize, objectives, and measure with no emotion when discussing his plans to eliminate any loose ends.  

Jack is correct that the accident was no accident, but he's also a person haunted by a previous government surveillance project which went sideways resulting in the death of the informant who was wearing the wire Jack provided that malfunctioned.   He thinks he can right this wrong in this case, but he finds there may be no redemption.  DePalma, like Martin Scorsese, specializes in stories which take on a subtext of guilt and wrongdoing, with redemption just out of reach.  Travolta's performance isn't flashy nor does it take advantage of his massive box-office appeal at the time.   Instead, we see him here as an actor giving a multi-layered performance, which he has done often, and it provides a strong moral center.