The legendary Brian De Palma ("Dressed to Kill") writes and directs "Blow Out," a taut thriller that mixes politics, conspiracy and paranoia in equal measure. John Travolta ("Get Shorty") gives an outstanding performance as a B-movie sound-effects editor who inadvertently records the car crash of a presidential hopeful. But the more he listens to his recording, the more he come to believe that the noise he heard was not a tire blow-out, but, rather, a gunshot, and that the accident was an act of political assassination. With the help of an eyewitness (Nancy Allen, "RoboCop"), Travolta attempts to unravel the web that has been unwittingly spun around him and uncover the truth. John Lithgow ("The Manhattan Project") and Dennis Franz ("The Package") co-star with a score by the great Pino Donaggio ("Carrie") and gritty cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond ("The Long Goodbye").