The Outfit

Director: John Flynn

1973 / 103min / 35mm

The late, lamented Robert Duvall turns in a performance of marvelously pared-down simplicity and intense focus in the film that Westlake considered the finest adaptation of one of the “Parker” novels he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark. Parker carries the sobriquet “Earl Macklin” here—Duvall’s role—but all of the crisp plotting and hard edges of Westlake/Stark’s prose find a cinematic equivalent in this grubby, unsentimental tale of independent operators pitted against the overwhelming manpower of a corporatized crime syndicate. Featuring an ensemble cast that brings together ’40s and ‘50s noir veterans (Robert Ryan, Emile Meyer, Timothy Carey, Elisha Cook Jr.) with idiosyncratic actors of then-more recent vintage, like Joe Don Baker and Karen Black, The Outfit represents the American crime thriller at its tough, taciturn best.

Distributor: Park Circus

Part of The Westlake Files