The Outfit (1973, Dir. John Flynn):
When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled off the bed. He heard the plop of a silencer behind him as he rolled, and the bullet punched the pillow where his head had been.
— Opening lines of The Outfit, by Richard Stark
Richard Stark’s Parker novels have been getting made into movies for half a century now, and it’s easy to see why. Stark’s (real name: Donald Westlake) tales are bullet trains of narrative packed with schemes, narrow escapes, brutish behavior, and above all, a hero who manages to just outpace the law and crime syndicates through sheer bloody-mindedness. Parker is the ultimate lone wolf, a man defined purely by his missions, minus attachments or doubt, and his stone-cold professionalism has always seemed a natural match with the precision of Hollywood’s hard-boiled thriller genre.
Successfully translating Parker to the big screen hasn’t been an easy proposition, however. For every certified classic (John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967)) there are many that fail (avoid Jason Statham’s Parker (2013) at all costs). Fortunately, John Flynn’s The Outfit, based on the third Parker novel, belongs in the select group of Parker movies that get the tone right. Essentially a sequel to Point Blank, the novel finds Parker on the run from the crime organization known as the Outfit after he unknowingly rips off one of their banks. Parker tends to take certain things personally, like having a hit put on him without perceived good reason, and the bulk of the story is his exacting, exhaustive revenge on the crime lords who ordered his execution. Naturally this means a lot of lifting of cold hard cash, and a lot of bashing of heads. The Outfit is seemingly infinite in its resources, but like most major corporations, it’s gotten bogged down in bureaucracy and complacency, which makes it ripe for the picking for an operator like Parker. An independent bad-ass sticking it to the Man? Definitely a hero for our times.
Flynn’s version of The Outfit (he also wrote the script) keeps the major outlines of the book but softens Parker (in the film his name is Earl Macklin) up a bit. In addition to Macklin’s professional sense of honor being violated, it gets personal when his brother Eddie (who doesn’t exist in Stark’s books) is assassinated at the opening of the movie by Outfit hitmen. Still, it’s clear that vengeance is only an excuse for Macklin to get down to the real business of taking the Outfit for 250 grand. If it means a broken bottle to the face or a bullet to the hand, so be it. On the run with his reluctant moll Bett (Karen Black), Macklin (Robert Duvall) ends up teaming with his former partner Cody (Joe Don Baker) for some payback. Yes, it’s a buddy movie, and while the Parker of the novels didn’t have much use for buddies beyond their utility at a given moment, Duvall and Baker share a taciturn chemistry — they’re at their happiest when they’re pulling jobs together. Eventually the trail leads up the food chain to Outfit underling Menner (Timothy Carey) and finally to the Big Man himself, Mailer (Robert Ryan, in his final film role). It’s no coincidence that Macklin shares the first letter of his name with these two hoods: all of them have murder on their minds.
Flynn never joined the pantheon of great directors, but this movie, along with Rolling Thunder, make his case as an underrated craftsman. The Outfit isn’t the marvel of mood that Point Blank is, but in its stripped-down, no-fuss direction, and its affinity for scuzzy locales — diners, seedy hotels, car junkyards — it captures Parker’s milieu better than any other movie based on Stark’s work. Tightly wound and efficient, Duvall’s Macklin is easily one of the best Parkers, and he’s matched stride for macho stride by Joe Don Baker, coming off his career-defining performance in Walking Tall and playing the same type of good ol’ boy with steel edges here. Ryan has only a handful of scenes, but he brings the full power of his screen persona to his baddie. You can see the film’s influences on everything from Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which also features a watch that’s a precious family heirloom, to Troy Kennedy Martin’s epic Edge of Darkness miniseries, which also concludes with Joe Don Baker involved in a final Alamo-like stand against a swarm of armed goons.
The Outfit does get a bit clunky at times — much of the staging is stodgy, and the movie never knows quite what to do with Karen Black, although she does get an affecting scene on the phone that reminds us, if only for a moment, of the human cost associated with men shooting each other up. The final confrontation in Mailer’s mansion also leads to a triumphant climax that seems out of step with all the grittiness that preceded it. Even though Parker always survived in the Stark books, victory was always a temporary state, just a breath before the next crisis. Still, Flynn keeps us engaged throughout, and there are plenty of verbal zingers to pep things up (my personal favorite: “Die someplace else”). He also knows how to train his camera on the faces of his weathered actors for maximum impact — and hoo boy, is this film loaded to the gills with memorable faces. In addition to the leading quartet of actors, you find either a screen great or soon-to-be great everywhere you turn. Blink and you’ll miss jazz legend Anita O’Day in a cameo; likewise for ex-boxer Roland La Starza, who has the distinction of appearing here and in Point Blank. Joanna Cassidy, a decade before she sprints down the neo-neon streets of LA in Blade Runner, turns up as Ryan’s bitchy wife, and noir veterans Carey, Marie Windsor, Roy Roberts, Elisha Cook and Jane Greer add an air of legitimacy to the proceedings.
The closest the movie comes to reflection is when Eddie’s widow (Greer) confronts Earl: “Money won’t do you any good. What do you want it for? You got a woman. You got time.” Too bad she never read a Stark novel, because even when Parker has a woman and time, neither are there for long. There’s always the next job, the next wave of hitmen sent to collect your head, the next race against the clock, the next set of obstacles to overcome. The no-frills thrills of The Outfit pay tribute to that very Stark-ian notion. In this film about bad and badder guys, we also get the pleasure of a final dose of irony in the last line of the picture: “The good guys always win.” ■
