The Outfit **** (1973, Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Karen Black, Robert Ryan) – Classic Movie Review 5278

Writer-director John Flynn’s sweaty, nerve-jangling 1973 neo noir thriller combines a tremendous cast and a terrific basis in a stupendous source novel by Donald E Westlake (writing as Richard Stark).

Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker and Robert Ryan head the top man’s man cast for this satisfyingly gritty Seventies pulp fiction vengeance-propelled crime movie. It is a brilliantly taut, exciting and hard-boiled action thriller, with the ever excellent Duvall on top form as Earl Macklin, an ex-convict recently released from jail, taking on the crime outfit mob villains who owned the bank that he robbed and shot dead his brother.

This great B-movie could not have a better cast for its needs and purpose: Karen Black plays Duvall’s girlfriend Bett Harrow, Baker plays a friendly heavy called Jack Cody who helps him, and Ryan plays the nasty mob boss, Mailer. The smaller roles are fleshed out with some of Hollywood’s most lustrous star character actors: Timothy Carey, Richard Jaeckel, Sheree North, Marie Windsor, Jane Greer, Elisha Cook Jr, Henry Jones, Anita O’ Day, Archie Moore and Roy Roberts.

Flynn’s screenplay is suitably twisting and complex in a tough picture, soundly based on a Donald E Westlake novel that was the sequel to Point Blank, filmed in 1967 with Lee Marvin.

It is shot by Bruce Surtees, produced by Carter de Haven and scored by Jerry Fielding, legendary names of the era.

It is one of Ryan’s last five films all released in the year of his death, on 11 July 1973, aged 63.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5278

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