Noir of the Week has a real treat–an essay on the film adaptation of The Outfit by crime novelist (and friend of this site) Wallace Stroby.
There’s a lot of Parker in [Robert Duvall’s Earl] Macklin, and [John] Flynn’s screenplay often approximates Westlake’s staccato, adverb-free prose. During his robberies, Macklin, like Parker, takes the time to ask his victims their names, so as to better control and calm them. He’s cool and collected enough to disarm a gunman, beat him senseless and then send him on his way with a dismissive “Die someplace else” (a line taken directly from the book). And during the climactic attack on the mob boss’s mansion, he wards off late-responding bodyguards with a terse “Stay out of it. He’s dead. You’re unemployed” – and a silenced automatic.
You’ll definitely want to read the whole thing.
(Wallace Stroby is the author of The Barbed-Wire Kiss, The Heartbreak Lounge, and the forthcoming Gone ’til November.)
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