Joe Don Baker

The Outfit

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Joe Don Baker, Robert Duvall and Karen Black

1970s neo-noir doesn’t begin and end with Chinatown and The Long Goodbye. Here, for instance, is The Outfit, director John Flynn’s lean adaptation of one of the 24 novels Donald Westlake wrote under his Richard Stark pseudonym. Many Stark stories feature the no-nonsense career criminal Parker and in a mini-festival of Parker adaptations, The Outfit would sit snugly alongside Point Blank (where he’s renamed Walker), the Jean-Luc Godard movie Made in USA (he becomes a she named Paula), Play Dirty (Mark Wahlberg as Parker) and Parker, in which Jason Statham plays Jason Statham. Here it’s Robert Duvall as Parker – renamed Earl Macklin – fresh out of stir and setting off on a … Read more

Charley Varrick

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Close up of Charley Varrick

Charley Varrick, a neo-noir from 1973, is much better than its mixed reputation would suggest. Lean and fast, dark and enigmatic, it stars Walter Matthau as a crop sprayer who heists a smalltown bank in the hope of making a fair amount of easy money. Nothing too massive, just a cushion. But when he and his sidekick come to count their haul, it turns out that it’s mostly 50s and 100s, not dollar bills, fives and tens as expected. They have inadvertently heisted a lot more money than they anticipated. This, for Charley, is a problem. It means the police will be particularly keen to get the money back. So will the bank. … Read more