The Outfit ***** (1973, Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Karen Black, Robert Ryan) – Classic Movie Review 5,278

The sweaty-palm, nerve-jangling 1973 neo noir crime thriller film The Outfit stars Robert Duvall as career criminal Earl Macklin, based on novelist Donald E Westlake’s character Parker.

Writer-director John Flynn’s sweaty-palm, nerve-jangling 1973 neo noir crime thriller film The Outfit combines a tremendous cast and a terrific basis in a stupendous 1963 source novel by Donald E Westlake (writing as Richard Stark). Robert Duvall stars as Earl Macklin, a character modelled on Westlake’s Parker, who was introduced in his 1962 novel The Hunter.

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 Earl Macklin’s girlfriend Bett Harrow, Baker plays a friendly heavy called Jack Cody who helps Macklin (friendly to Macklin that is) as a loyal sidekick and backup, and Ryan plays the extremely nasty mob boss, Mailer, who soon has his own plans for a spot of vengeance. All three top quality performers are on their best form too, Black and Baker making the finest of sidekicks for Duvall, and Ryan the worthiest of opponents. They are film stars, yes, but they are also character actors, real actors, giving nuanced, stylish performances. All these characters are suffering pain and hurt of some sort, and struggling to survive and maybe even prosper a little in the dark noir world. And rhese are exactly the right actors to suggest and enact all that.

The smaller roles are fleshed out with some of Hollywood’s most lustrous and iconic 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. It’s a shame that they can’t have more to do, but they make the most of their screen time, and it’s great to see them all again.

The Outfit original cinema release movie poster.

Flynn’s screenplay is suitably twisting and complex in an extremely tough and cynical picture, soundly based on a Donald E Westlake novel that was the sequel to Point Blank, filmed in 1967 with Lee Marvin (as Walker), and the film is likewise a kind of sequel to Point Blank. The Outfit runs in a series of knife-edge set pieces, staged realistically but operatically. Both films are vengeance movies, with an unstoppable monster of a hero that we are somehow supposed to admire and like. Talk about world weary, this is life weary, where a warped sense of justice and honour counts more even than money among thieves. Talk about talk, Flynn’s screenplay has to-die-for dialogue, in between the extended bursts of suspense and action, It’s a thriller alright.

The Outfit is shot by Bruce Surtees, produced by Carter de Haven and scored by Jerry Fielding, legendary names of the era. The cinematography, production and score are stupendous, effective, imaginative and flavourful in that particular late Sixties/ early Seventies way.

Donald E Westlake called it ‘one movie made from a Richard Stark (his own pseudonym) book that got the feeling right. That movie is done flat, just like the books.’

Release date: October 19, 1973.

Donald Edwin Westlake (July 12, 1933 – December 31, 2008)

The Eddie Macklin character is modelled on Donald E Westlake’s fictional career criminal character Parker, introduced in his 1962 novel The Hunter. Westlake’s editor told him that if he rewrote its ending so Parker escaped, he could publish up to three books a year about Parker. Westlake went on to write 23 more Parker novels over the next 46 years.

The 1962 crime thriller novel The Hunter is the basis for three feature films: John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967) starring Lee Marvin, Brian Helgeland’s Payback (1999) starring Mel Gibson and Shane Black’s Play Dirty starring Mark Wahlberg. Other appearances of the Parker character include: Gordon Flemyng’s The Split (1968) starring Jim Brown, based on the 1966 novel The Seventh, John Flynn’s The Outfit (1973), and Taylor Hackford’s Parker (2013) starring Jason Statham, based on the 2000 novel Flashfire.

Robert Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973)

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

Ryan’s final roles include: Lolly-Madonna XXX [The Lolly-Madonna War] (1973) with Rod Steiger, The Man Without a Country (1973), The Outfit (1973), Executive Action (1973) with Burt Lancaster, and The Iceman Cometh (1973).

Executive Action and The Iceman Cometh were both released in October 1973 after Ryan’s death.

The cast

The cast Robert Duvall as Earl Macklin, Karen Black as Bett Harrow, Joe Don Baker as Cody, Robert Ryan as Mailer, Timothy Carey as Menner, Richard Jaeckel as Chemey, Sheree North as Buck’s Wife Tom Reese as Hit Man. Felice Orlandi as Frank Orlandi, Marie Windsor as Madge Coyle, Jane Greer as Alma, Henry Jones as Doctor, Joanna Cassidy as Rita, Elisha Cook Jr as Carl, Anita O’ Day, Archie Moore and Roy Roberts.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,278

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