The Outfit

 The Outfit is a crime revenge picture released in 1973 and directed by John Flynn.  It's an example of solid genre filmmaking, entertaining and without any pretense -- or, for that matter, ambition.  The movie has an interesting cast:  Robert Duvall plays Earl Macklin, an ex-convict who wreaks havoc on the titular "outfit" -- that is an organized criminal enterprise -- that has betrayed him and murdered his brother; Karen Black is Bett, Duvall's girlfriend, who has been also complicit in the hero's betrayal; Robert Ryan, looking a bit haggard and weary, plays the kingpin gangster, a guy named Art.  His main squeeze is the beautiful Joanna Cassidy, appearing in an underwritten part.  The chubby Joe Don Baker plays the part of Macklin's loyal buddy, Cody.  The film's ingredients are excellent -- the story is based on a novel by Richard Stark (the pseudonym for Donald Westlake) and adapted for the screen by an uncredited Walter Hill; the movie is full of wonderful character actors -- for instance, Elisha Cooke, a fixture of film noir from the fifties through 1973 and later, plays a barkeeper and many of the heavies will be familiar to viewers of my age who watched Network TV (there was no other kind at that time) during the late sixties and early seventies.  The most notable and praiseworthy aspect of this project are the pungent locations -- the film is set in various cafes and diners in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and you can almost smell these places; the gangster's villa is both suitably decadent but also decomposing -- at least, the outside and tennis court seem to be rotting.  Half of the movie takes place in squalid little motel rooms, also lovingly shown, and there are plenty of roadhouses and titty bars, also shot with compelling documentary fidelity.  It's a bleak landscape and the roads are always deserted and the mountains sit piled-up over everything like heaps of unwashed clothing. Dogs are always good in movies and this picture features a  loyal German shepherd, a pack of sinister, aristocratic-looking Dobermans, and an implausibly fierce yellow Lab. 

The premise of the picture is that three crooks, the two Macklin brothers and Cody, have robbed a bank in Wichita which turns out to be operated by the Mob.  Earl is thrown in the clink for a 2 1/2 year bid.  The Mob sends "sluggers", an euphemism for professional assassins to kill Cody and Earl's brother.  A thug dressed as a priest guns down Earl's brother in his backyard, much to the dismay of the man's German shepherd.  Cody narrowly escapes.  When Earl is released from jail, his erstwhile girlfriend takes him to a motor-court where several assassins try to kill him.  Her excuse for this betrayal (she earlier fingered him for the robbery as well) is that she has been tortured; a cruel hoodlum named Menner has scarred her arm with cigarette burns and threatened to cut-up her face..  With the girl in tow, Earl plots revenge.  He makes a frontal assault on a poker game involving several of the bad guys including Menner whose finger he shoots off --  "this will teach you not to use a girl as an ashtray," he says.  Earl then teams up with his buddy, and fellow bank robber, Cody to repel attacks by the aggrieved gangsters.  Earl has said that he is owed $250,000 for his trials and tribulations.  With Cody, he manages to steal that money, leading to further violent encounters with the mobsters.  The action scenes in this movie are brilliantly choreographed and extremely exciting -- there are gun battles in office buildings and on a mountain road, a spectacular fight in a sleazy supper club, and Earl's final assault on the big Boss' tightly guarded mansion.  The action is not meretricious and Earl takes care not to kill anyone he doesn't have to -- although the body count is fairly high by the end of the movie.  

The movie has excellent dialogue: after beating up a thug who has tried to kill him, Earl says: "Die someplace else."  In the preliminaries to the fight in the supper club, Earl tells a cook with a cleaver to butt out:  "I don't talk to guys wearing aprons."  After shooting up the big boss, his girlfriend says:  "Damn you, why'd you have to kill him" to which Earl replies:  "He owed me money."  

The Outfit's treatment of women will likely distress some.  Earl beats up Bett, abuse that she seems to accept with equanimity and, even, thinks that she deserves.  (This doesn't adversely affect their love affair which involves pillow-fights and lots of teasing.)  Art's moll doesn't do much but loll around in her lingerie; she also receives a tennis lesson and looks very fetching in her white shorts.  And, there's a startling scene set at a hillbilly's auto salvage yard -- the place defended by the snarling lab.  The hillbilly is an ugly brute but he has a gorgeous and seductive wife.  She tries to seduce Cody right under her husband's nose and, then, when he rejects her blandishments, accuses him of rape.  This leads to a big fight which the wicked woman observes with amusement, now having substituted a black turtleneck with a big crucifix for her earlier skin-tight togs.  This stuff was retrograde even by 1973 standards and, although amusing, is a little appalling in 2024.

I think this picture is very good in its an unassuming way.  This is the kind of story that couldn't be told on 1973 mainstream TV -- too much violence and implied sex -- and, so, a picture of this sort had a function in the then-existing media ecosphere:  it was adult entertainment, seriously intended, supplemental to a dozen TV shows with similar content but less explicit.  I know that Cable streaming services have tried to produce equivalent vehicles -- that is, crime shows that are pretty lurid but with good actors and well-written scripts.  However, I think cable streaming has been far less successful in this endeavor than MGM in 1973 in this little film.