The Outfit (1973)

A woman is hovering over the body of her freshly dead husband staring up at his murderer. 

“Damn you. Why’d you have to kill him?” She says. 

“He owed me money,” the killer replies.

And I cackled, gloriously, for a good while after that. 

Here try another one. Delivered by Robert Duvall playing Donald Westlake’s cool professional Parker (he’s called Macklin here because Westlake wouldn’t let the movie guys use the Parker name.) 

In this instance a man is claiming he doesn’t have the combination to the safe. 

“Take off your shoes. Every time I tell you to open that safe and you say “no,” I’m going to shoot off one of your toes.”

If you’re not sold by now you don’t like crime movies. You got no heart kid. 

Which is not to say that The Outfit is head and shoulders above the other 60s and 70s crime revenge thrillers. Cause it’s not. But it is, absolutely, on par with the best of the genre. 

Now, I promise you, you have seen this movie before. Hollywood has made 10 or 20 versions of this particular Donald Westlake story. Parker is betrayed, gets out of prison (or the hospital) and tracks down the bastards who betrayed him killing a bunch of bad guys till he either kills the top guy or goes out in a blaze of glory or both. 

In this particular version he’s called Macklin and the gangsters kill his brother Ed who was living a quiet life after the robbery went wrong. 

Late in the movie Macklin’s wife begs him to stop this crazy killing spree and go live the quiet life. 

“We can escape.” She says

“Ed tried that.” 

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do baby. 

The Outfit has one thing that most of those other movies lack, the great Joe Don Baker as Macklin’s pal Cody. And Robert Duvall is very good though it’s strange seeing someone so unconventional looking playing this particular role. In this time in his life you would have expected Duvall to be one of the random gangsters or a friendly lawyer. 

He does not, under any circumstances, look like an action hero. The 1970s were a weird time though and Duvall is a great actor regardless of the role. 

This is what I love about chasing down old movies. Sometimes you open Al Copone’s vault and there’s nothing there and sometimes you find a bag full of stolen money, a getaway car and a couple of tough guys having too much fun on a big screen.