The best film of director John Flynn may be this unpretentious crime saga, a Richard Stark adaptation that makes no wrong moves across a hundred minutes of tense mob banditry. Robert Duvall is out of prison and looking to punish the syndicate. Aided by gunman Joe Don Baker and getaway driver Karen Black, he gets payback by following the time-honored Tony Camonte principle: Do It First, Do It Hard, and Keep on Doing It. Cinematic nostalgia provides added appeal … a gallery of supporting parts is cast with familiar faces from classic films noir: Marie Windsor!  Jane Greer!

The Outfit
Blu-ray
Arrow Video
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 105, 103 min. / The Good Guys Always Win / Street Date July 27, 2026 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.99
Starring: Robert Duvall, Karen Black, Joe Don Baker, Robert Ryan, Timothy Carey, Richard Jaeckel, Sheree North, Felice Orlandi, Marie Windsor, Jane Greer, Henry Jones, Joanna Cassidy, Tom Reese, Elisha Cook Jr., Bill McKinney, Anita O’Day, Archie Moore, Tony Young, Edward Ness, Roy Roberts, Emile Meyer, Roy Jenson, Jeannine Riley, Army Archerd.
Cinematography: Bruce Surtees
Action scene coordinator: Ronnie Rondell
Art Director: Tambi Larsen
Film Editor: Ralph E. Winters
Composer: Jerry Fielding
Screenplay by John Flynn from the novel The Outfit by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake)
Produced by Carter DeHaven
Directed by John Flynn

The Outfit was adapted from the third of sixteen ‘Parker’ novels by prolific novelist Donald E. Westlake under the name Richard Stark. The character Parker is an ingenious and bold armed robber; his misadventures normally see him battling mobsters, not the cops. The first Parker novel The Hunter was filmed in 1967 as  Point Blank, with star Lee Marvin. That daringly edited gangland art-film was a big hit for director John Boorman in a breakout year for violent movies. Marvin’s Parker character became ‘Walker’; in Flynn’s Outfit Parker takes the name Macklin. He’s also less urbane, more of a rural bandit type.

Director John Flynn had already made his reputation with The Sergeant, a psychodrama about a homosexual attraction in the military ranks. Cult fans know him best as the director of 1977’s Rolling Thunder, an ultraviolent revenge tale with William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones. But Flynn’s best show may be The Outfit, a low-key, high-octane mobster shoot ’em up with a lean script and slick action sequences. It was filmed on locations in Southern California, yet the art directors managed a vivid impression of being somewhere in the Midwest, where The Mob goes by the name ‘The Outfit.’  As was typical for a James Aubrey-era MGM release, Flynn’s show didn’t receive the marketing push it deserved. But crime fans loved it. One look at the top stars was all it took: Robert Duvall, Karen Black and Joe Don Baker.

As an extra added jolt, the long list of supporting actors is a literal rogues’ gallery of film noir greats from the classic era, going back to the 1940s. John Flynn must have coaxed some out of retirement.

Earl Macklin (Duvall) is released from prison after serving a term for being caught in violation of his parole. Expecting to reunite with his two cohorts from an earlier bank robbery, he discovers that his brother Ed has been murdered by The Outfit — which ran the bank they robbed. Earl’s girlfriend Bett Jarrow (Karen Black) was forced to betray him by syndicate middle manager Menner (Timothy Carey, as psychotic as ever). Bett accompanies Earl when he visits his brother’s widow, Alma (Jane Greer). Bett also drives the getaway car when he breaks into Menner’s card game, robs the players, and demands a huge payment from the syndicate. Earl then contacts his other partner Cody (Joe Don Baker) and they run wild raiding Menner’s backroom gambling rooms.

Knowing how The Outfit operates, Earl and Cody make a point of striking first and hardest. When the mob chief Mailer (Robert Ryan) reneges on an agreement, the pro team of Earl and Cody elect to hit him in his own mansion. The place is so well fortified, it might be a suicide mission: “We can get in, but I don’t know about getting out.”

Unlike John Boorman’s Point Blank, the refreshingly direct The Outfit doesn’t suggest deeper meanings, artistic or political. Earl Macklin and Cody are hardened working-class criminals, not knights on a noble mission, or potential folk heroes representing country values. They don’t even listen to country music. Earl’s a mean mother, as shown when he shoots Menner in the hand without warning, just for kicks. Cody is more even-tempered but can work up a real hate-on when necessary. Neither man kills when there’s no need. Getting the draw on an unlucky goon, Macklin tells him to  “Go die somewhere else.”

The bond between Earl and Bett is all chemical. She’s understandably troubled by his bad attitude and sullen silences. Yet Earl holds no grudge against Bett for betraying him to Menner, as he knows she would have been killed otherwise.

For a supposed neo-noir, an awful lot goes right for these two gunmen. Their disguises as mailmen and repair guys work beautifully as they burst into The Outfit’s money-counting rooms. They interact with a series of old-time hoods, none of whom rats them out. It’s not like there’s honor among hoods, but ordinary Outfit footsoldiers respect Real Deal operators like Earl and Cody.

Flynn’s screenplay presents stand-alone scenes that could be one-act plays, like the famous Hemingway short story The Killers. The best takes place on a farm, where Cody and Earl pause to exchange a hot car for one with a clean record. Mechanic Kimmie Cherney (Richard Jaeckel) makes the deal, but his brother Buck (Bill McKinney of  Deliverance) gets riled up when his wife (Sheree North), out of plain meanness, accuses Cody of trying to rape her. North’s trampy troublemaker is as close to an old-fashioned noir femme fatale as The Outfit gets. This must be hard times for loose women, as nobody but her pea-brained husband takes her seriously.

The very sympathetic Bett is revealed as a lost girl doing her best to stay loyal to her man. At one point she makes a long distance phone call asking if she can return home, a scene reminiscent of Montgomery Clift’s phone-home in  The Misfits. The only other woman with more than a few lines is Mailer’s trophy wife Rita (Joanna Cassidy of  Blade Runner). She’s not happy either, as her mob boss husband mostly just tells her to shut up, the same way he bullies all of his mob goons. As this is 1973, all three women appear at least once in revealing attire — too bad the crooks they’re with have so little extra time to play around.

John Flynn stages action stylishly, but without undue frills. What we’re mostly aware of is Cody and Earl’s brute efficiency. Even better is that nothing about the action scenes is cartoonish. Nobody dodges bullets or performs uncanny feats of acrobatics. Nobody absorbs outrageous physical punishments and keeps on ticking.

At age 42, Robert Duvall had finally arrived as a name star. He plays the part without a toupee. Joe Don Baker made a huge splash the same year as Buford Pusser in  Walking Tall, the vigilante epic that became director Phil Karlson’s big payoff after a long and distinguished career as a director for hire. Karen Black was by now established as the darling of New Hollywood, a real phenomenon in independent production. She would soon move on to a series of higher-profile pictures, culminating in Robert Altman’s  Nashville.

The Outfit is the final released film featuring actor Robert Ryan, although the last movie he filmed was Dalton Trumbo and David Miller’s paranoid conspiracy thriller  Executive Action. Ryan had known he was dying of cancer for a couple of years. He sketches the mob boss Mailer with just a few minutes on screen. The man is always angry, near the boiing point.

We aren’t kidding. The familiar faces in this show is a veritable Who’s Who of noirdom. None are abused with empty cameos. Here’s the rundown:

Emile Meyer   Panic in the Streets,  The People Against O’Hara,  The Mob,  Shield for Murder,  Sweet Smell of Success,  Baby Face Nelson, The Lineup;
Roy Roberts   The Brasher Doubloon,  He Walked by Night,  Force of Evil,  The Killer that Stalked New York;
Roy Jenson   The Getaway,  Chinatown;
Elisha Cook Jr.   Stranger on the Third Floor,  The Maltese Falcon,  Phantom Lady,  The Big Sleep;
Marie Windsor   Force of Evil,  The Narrow Margin,  The Sniper,  City that Never Sleeps,  The Killing;
Richard Jaeckel   The Lineup,  The Gun Runners;
Sheree North   No Down Payment,  Madigan;
Tom Reese    The Money Trap,  The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre;
Felice Orlandi   Killer’s Kiss,  The Harder They Fall,  Bullitt;
Jane Greer   They Won’t Believe Me,  Out of the Past,  The Big Steal,  The Company She Keeps;
Timothy Carey   Crime Wave,  The Killing.

Some of these favorites have rather tiny parts in The Outfit but all make an impact. Some we didn’t recognize at first. Others elict a satisfying, “ooh, thats ….” reaction.

Director John Flynn is a positive personal memory, because I saw him a couple of times when I was a student working in the UCLA Research Library’s special collections’ Reading Room. Flynn looked like he might have been an actor. He came by to drop off filming artifacts — scripts, notes, etc., for librarian Audree Malkin to add to Special Collections. Among the goodies were a beautiful set of storyboards for The Outfit. I mainly remember the boards for the opening sequence.

Arrow Video’s Blu-ray of The Outfit is a facelift for this dependable show … the new scan and remastering is like a rejuvenation, helping us to shake off the memory of ages’ worth of old TV prints and dull video transfers.

Arrow commissioned its own restoration from the original camera negative; the colors are brighter and the texture more vivid. John Flynn purposely choose nondescript rural areas for filming, and the transfer helps to bring them to life. Bruce Surtees’ character lighting is also fine, including the glamour work with Sheree North and Joanna Cassidy. Karen Black spends a lot of time with her hair mussed, but she has that winning smile…

The clear audio showcases Jerry Fielding’s solid but unostentatious soundtrack, that serves the picture so well.

The first thing we learned about The Outfit is that it was given a second ending that would allow it to be shown on Network TV — a rigged ‘crime does not pay’ finish to mollify the Standards and Practices people. Both versions are viewable but the theatrical end is the one to stick with.

The extra featurettes give us two critical viewpoints, an informed talk about the prolific author Donald Westlake, and an old interview or two. Walter Hill talks about chumming around with John Flynn in his salad days … but keeps turning the subject back to his own projects. A conversational commentary with Jedidiah Ayres and Mike White has plenty of information on all those favorite actors. Also satisfying are the text essays in the 36-page insert booklet. Priscilla Page honors the ‘Parker’ tradition, Glenn Kenny does a book-to-film comparison and Chris D. spreads a wider net into other Parker book adaptations.

And as a last note, the Tony Stella cover artwork is one of his best. MGM’s original poster is so sleazy, it makes the show seem suitable only for a grindhouse. It’s on the reverse, but I’m sticking with Stella’s.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Outfit
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Jedidiah Ayres and Mike White
Featurette The Man With the Getaway Face on author Donald E. Westlake / Richard Stark, by Levi Stahl
Featurette Paths Not Taken by Walter Chaw
Featurette Tapping into the Outsider on the movie and the Parker novels by Alissa Marmol-Cernat and Shay Dennis
Older interview with Walter Hill on director John Flynn
Theatrical trailer
Image galleries
Insert booklet with essays by Chris D, Glenn Kenny, and Priscilla Page.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case in card sleeve
Reviewed: July 6, 2026
(7544outf)

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