The lead performances by Travolta and Allen, the direction by De Palma and the visual style were cited as the strongest points of the film.
Critics also recognised the stylistic and narrative connection to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, whom De Palma admires, and giallo films.
Quentin Tarantino praises De Palma as the "greatest director of his generation" and cites Blow Out as one of his three favorite films that he would take to a desert island.
[8] While in post-production on the low-budget slasher film Co-ed Frenzy, Philadelphia sound technician Jack Terry is instructed by his producer Sam to obtain a more realistic-sounding scream and better wind effects.
He learns from a news report that, seemingly coincidentally, a man named Manny Karp filmed the accident with a motion picture camera.
When Karp sells stills from his film to a local tabloid, News Today Magazine, Jack splices them together into a crude movie, syncs them with his recorded audio and finds a visible flash and smoke from the fired gun.
Over a drink, Jack reveals how he left his prior career as part of a government commission to root out police corruption after a wiretap operation he was involved in led to the death of an undercover cop named Freddie Corso.
Still listening in on his earpiece, Jack spots Burke attacking her on a rooftop, startles him and ultimately stabs him to death with his own weapon, but shockingly discovers that Sally has already been strangled, cradling her lifeless corpse in his arms.
After completing Dressed to Kill, De Palma was considering several projects, including Act of Vengeance (later produced for HBO starring Charles Bronson and Ellen Burstyn), Flashdance, and a script of his own titled Personal Effects.
[9] According to screenwriter Bill Mesce Jr., he wrote the first draft of the script after winning a competition in Take One magazine hosted by Brian De Palma, but his version ended up being almost completely changed.
"Basically I just shot Blow Out straight", replied cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, "... By not diffusing and not flashing as much ... That doesn't mean I necessarily like that look but I think it was good for the picture.
[12] Thematically, Blow Out almost "exclusively concern[s] the mechanics of movie making" with a "total, complete and utter preoccupation with film itself as a medium in which ... style really is content.
[14] As with several other De Palma films, Blow Out explores the power of guilt; both Jack and Sally are motivated to help right their past wrongs, both with tragic consequences.
Its protagonist's obsessive reconstruction of a sound recording to uncover a possible murder recalls both Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup[15] and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation.
[9] A flashback where Travolta recalls an incident where his work got a police informant killed was also taken from an abandoned project, Prince of the City, which was ultimately directed by Sidney Lumet.
"[15] Both Ebert and fellow critic Gene Siskel recommended it on its original run[19] (and with the former putting it as part of his list of their "Buried Treasures" in a 1986 episode of At the Movies).
[25] In particular, Quentin Tarantino has consistently praised the movie,[26] listing it alongside Rio Bravo and Taxi Driver as one of his three favorite films.
[27] In homage, Tarantino used the music cue "Sally and Jack" from the score by Pino Donaggio within his own film Death Proof, the second half of the double release Grindhouse.
Club put Blow Out at #1 of their list of De Palma's best films ("The Essentials"), describing it as The quintessential De Palma film, this study of a movie craftsman investigating a political cover-up marries suspense, sick humor, sexuality, and leftist cynicism into an endlessly reflective study of art imitating life imitating art.