In Like Flynn

Reading Quentin Tarantino's book, Cinema Speculation, made me want to watch two 70s flicks, The Outfit and Rolling Thunder, finally getting around to viewing both over the past week.  Both are lower-budget films with high-powered casts and are quite good, quite gritty, and quite violent, with a distinctively 70s look.  Both directed by John Flynn.

The Outfit (1973) is one of eight films based on the Parker character, a hard-boiled criminal, in a series of novels written under by Donald Westlake under a pseudonym.  Others include Point Blank with Lee Marvin as the Parker character (1967), The Split with Jim Brown (1968), Slayground with Peter Coyote (1983), Payback with Mel Gibson (1999), and Parker with Jason Statham (2013).

Flynn's version stars Robert Duvall as Earl Macklin (Parker) and Joe Don Baker as Earl's partner Cody.  Both are terrific.  Karen Black plays The Girl (there's always The Girl in a Parker film).  Macklin, recently released from prison seeks revenge against his brother's killers.  The problem is the killers were sent by The Outfit, the powerful Mob organization.  The great Robert Ryan, in one of his last roles, players Mailer, head of The Outfit.

The Outfit is better than the two other Parker movies I've seen, Point Blank and Payback and is far superior as a genre film to the much more praised Michael Mann film Thief (1981)(1), which I viewed last year.

Flynn's next film was Rolling Thunder (1977), one of the early returning Vietnam vet films, which became a trend later in the 70s.  The title is taken from the code name for the American bombing campaign in North Vietnam.  Major Charles Rane has just returned to Texas from seven years as a POW in a North Vietnamese prison where he was tortured.  Accompanying him is Rane's companion from that prison, Master Sergeant Johnny Vohden.  Both are psychologically damaged from their experience, both have difficulty adjusting to civilian life, and both seem placid on the outside.  After a calm beginning, this becomes a revenge film as Rane tracks down the murderers of his wife and son.

As Rane, William Devane, in his first lead role, plays the troubled character to perfection.  In one of his first roles, Tommy Lee Jones as Vohden is good in his more limited screen time, and has the best line in the film.  Linda Haynes plays The Girl and she is very good, better than Black in The Outfit.  

I doubt whether, if these movies were remade today, they would have the same endings.

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(1) Mann's highly overrated 1995 film, Heat, with Pacino and De Niro, also has elements of the Parker character and stylized storyline.