THE OUTFIT

(John Flynn, 1973)

Director Flynn made a series of spartan, taut little b-movie thrillers in the early to mid-1970s. The Outfit, the first, was soon followed by Rolling Thunder and Defiance. They're all naturally streamlined, narratively curt and focused on characters who are utterly defined by their actions. In the case of The Outfit, Flynn had the perfect style and sensibility for the source material, one of Richrd Stark's superb "Parker" series of novels.
His Parker is renamed Earl Macklin and played by Robert Duvall as a grimly focused professional who takes on the mob after they kill his brother in revenge for a robbery upon a mob-owned bank some years before. With his girl (Karen Black) and old partner, Cody (Joe Don Baker) in tow, Macklin sets about ruining the mob by attrition, robbing card games, bookmakers and counting rooms across the country and killing anyone who tries to stop him. This naturally gets the attention of big boss Robert Ryan.
Flynn's style is simple, utterly unadorned, and his storytelling is correspondingly strong. He often finds a good master-shot and lets a portion of the scene play out that way, his camera subtly tracking characters as they move around. Those master-shots are plain; there are never any fancy angles, overly clever framing or ostentatious movements in Flynn's work.
That means that sometimes - when he's not quite on his game - scenes can play like tv, despite the (occasionally inspired) Bruce Surtees photography, which is particularly good at finding the dingy beauty in the dull, underlit interiors of hotel corridors and galley kitchens. But other times there's a muscular, tight efficiency to his work.
That's there too in the acting; Duvall is stone-faced throughout, the mask only cracking a couple of times when he seems amused by what he is doing, or more commonly by one of Baker's country boy monologues.
Everyone is muted; Black has a couple of scenes of emotional upset, but Ryan was born for this sort of tersely masculine material, and his weary, lined face alone suggests the long life of death and violence his character has been responsible for.
There is much violence here too; Duvall and Baker pistol-whipping and blasting their way through a savage road movie underworld. Every situation turns on violence or sex - the hillbilly brothers they buy a car from turn violent when Baker refuses the advances of the wife of one, Ryan avoids violence on one occasion to protect his pretty young wife who, he insinuated "treats me well", and even a routine police traffic stop goes wrong. It all ends quite satisfyingly in a big showdown, as it must, and Flynn delivers.
He's helped immeasurably by a terrific Jerry Fielding score; by turns funky, sleazy and tense, it improves this gripping, pulpy b-movie the way all great soundtracks do.

ROLLING THUNDER

(John Flynn, 1977)

Probably better-known these days as one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite films than for any other reason, Rolling Thunder was originally written by Paul Schrader in his 1970s pomp, just a year after the (similar in a few respects) triumph of Taxi Driver. The screenplay was rewritten by journeyman Heywood Gould, but Schrader retains a credit, and you can hear his voice throughout the film.
His story follows Air Force Major Charles Rane (William Devane), who returns to San Antonio, Texas after seven years in a Vietnamese POW Camp. His homecoming sees him rewarded by his grateful hometown with a silver dollar for every day of his incarceration, a new red chevy, and the news that his wife is leaving him for another man. Things get worse when a gang of thugs invade his home, torture him for the whereabouts of those silver dollars - the meeting between his hand and a garbage disposal is unforgettable - then murder his wife and child and leave him for dead. So Rane sets out for revenge with the help of an old POW buddy (Tommy Lee Jones) and Mexico and gunplay inevitably ensue.
That plot makes the film sound like a typical piece of 70s B-movie pulp, and that is what Rolling Thunder is. But it is more interesting than a synopsis suggests. Alongside the sleaze and nastiness and the casually racist portrayal of Mexico, its depiction of its Vietnam veteran protagonists presents them as almost inhuman. Both Devane and Jones constantly - and with no little foreboding - wear sunglasses, their eyes hidden, faces unreadable. They are damaged men, utterly desensitised by the violence inflicted upon them. This gives rise to a few amazing scenes. If Devane's explanation of how to survive torture and consequent homoerotic re-enactment with his wife's lover is disturbing, then his explanation that he is "dead", that they had taken something from him and he would never feel anything again explains both that and his entire performance. He underplays throughout, mostly expressionless, only really seeming to come alive in the scenes of violence. His insistence upon living in the garden shed as if it were his cell in Vietnam contrasts with Jones' prison; he is suffocating within the warm embrace of his family, his haunted eyes flat in response to their banalities. Like Devane, his glee at the apocalyptic violence of the climax is nicely, frighteningly played. Where Devane is prickly and complicated, Jones is beautiful, magnetic.
But Rolling Thunder does succeed as a piece of pulp, too. Director Flynn works with a lean, muscular economy, like Walter Hill, only lacking his ambition and imagination, but with a similar gift for staging and even, at times, for composition. Noirish lighting and precise cutting add to the murky atmosphere, and the action scenes are terrific; brutishly, graphically violent and blunt in their clarity. There are some fine pulp details, too: the hissably awful villains, Devane sharpening his claw until it is a blade, Jones' lack of response with a whore turning into delight once the gunfire starts, and the gratuitous nudity at various points.
Easy then to see just what Tarantino likes so much.