I’m a giant fan of the Parker novels by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake writing under a pseudonym). They’ve been adapted with varying success to the silver screen and I’ve made it a mission to track them down and watch whatever I can. THE OUTFIT is based on the novel of the same name, which is the third book in the series, which continues the war Parker began on the criminal organization that owed him money after a job went south in THE HUNTER. Since it is a standalone movie, we’re not dealing with Parker this time around. We’re instead following Earl Macklin (Robert Duvall), who is looking for payback after his brother was killed for robbing an Outfit owned bank.
The movie opens with some shady characters on their way to Eddie Macklin’s farm. They find him and kill him, thinking their story is over. Earl gets out of prison a little later, having served a stint for carrying a concealed weapon. His girlfriend Bett (Karen Black) picks him up and takes him to a shady motel to lay low for awhile. While they’re chatting, she lets it slip that his brother was killed, and he realizes that he’s next on the list. He stops the assassin and finds out who sent him, a crook named Menner. The same name comes up as the one who tortured Bett to get her to turn on him, so he decided to go and pay the man a visit.
At a fancy hotel, Earl breaks in and interrupts a high stakes poker game. He takes the money and shoots Menner in the hand for hurting Bett. Earl says until he gets $250,000 as payment for his brother’s death, he will be hitting every Outfit operation he can and keeping that in addition to the lump sum.
Figuring that Macklin might go back to one of his friends, Menner sends two hitmen to visit Cody (Joe Don Baker), the owner of a small diner. That goes awry when they realize the town sheriff is there, so they bounce. In the meantime, Macklin hunts down Cody and enlists him on his crusade. Together, with Bett as the driver, they intend on taking down every Outfit business one heist at a time.
Despite a heavily changed first act to set the wheels in motion and different names, THE OUTFIT hews fairly closely to the book. Sure, Bett hangs around when she’s just a fling in the novel, and there isn’t a whole network and team of criminal that help Parker like in the book, but it hits the major beats. It would have been hard to fit that many people into the movie without making it an epic, and honestly, it works a lot better letting Duvall and Baker do their thing as two friends out for revenge and having a blast.
Duvall isn’t quite what I have in my mind when I picture Parker, but he does a good job as the more genial and friendly Macklin. Bits of Parker’s seriousness shine through when things get tough and you can see the cold fury lurking under the surface in the books. Joe Don Baker’s Cody is based on Handy McKay from the novel, straight down to wanting to retire and open up a place to become a short order cook, even though he already was. It would just be in a different place. He’s a might younger than Handy is in the novels and is a little more capable in a fight, but it works. The real treat is just watching the two play off each other as they go about their heists and let the sparks fly.
Karen Black is great as Bett, which is a bit of a nothing role in the novel and fleshed out here. She just wants Macklin to run away with her and love each other. But he’s got business to take care of and won’t stop until it is done, no matter how mad it makes her or drives her crazy.
Writer and director John Flynn does a great job with the material and it is clear that he has an affection for it. He knows what to cut out and what to leave in and how to build up the tension in a scene until it is about to blow. It’s no surprise that Westlake said it was the one movie made from a Parker novel that got the feeling right.
THE OUTFIT is an enjoyable, tense and action-packed flick with great performances from actors who know how to ooze character. I might not have imagine Duvall as Parker in my head, but I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him as him in an alternate timeline where he and Baker got to cover more books in the series.
If you’re a Parker fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
