My favorite chapter in Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation is “The Outfit” (1973). Tarantino writes about how his obsession with movies began as a 6-year-old kid when his mother used to take him to see films on a weekly basis in “Little Q Watching Big Movies.”
The Outfit, based on a “Richard Stark” (aka, Donald E. Westlake) caper novel, follows the professional thief who takes on criminal syndicate. John Flynn directed The Outfit, starring Robert DuVall as Macklin (aka, “Parker”), Karen Black as Bett, and Joe Don Baker as Cody.
Tarantino prefaces his review of The Outfit with an analysis of the Parker series of caper novels and the movies based on them. Tarantino disagrees that Lee Marvin is the quintessential Parker in Point Blank. He doesn’t like the Mel Gibson remake, either.
Tarantino considers the best movie Parker as Robert De Niro as “Neil McCauley” in Michael Mann’s Heat. But, he doesn’t like the conclusion of Heat.
Whether you like Quentin Tarantino and/or his movies or not, reading Tarantino’s opinions on many classic movies provides insights and acute observations. If you’re a movie fan, there’s plenty here to delight you! I hope Tarantino is working on a sequel. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Little Q watching big movies — 1
Bullitt (1968) –31
Dirty Harry (1971) — 47
Deliverance (1972) — 69
)The Getaway (1972) — 89
The Outfit (1973) — 117
Second-String Samurai: an appreciation of Kevin Thomas — 137
New Hollywood in the seventies: the post-sixties anti-establishment auteurs vs. the movie brats — 159
Sisters (1973) — 177
Daisy Miller (1974) — 199
Taxi Driver (1976) — 211
Cinema speculation: What if Brian De Palma directed Taxi Driver instead of Martin Scorsese? — 235
Rolling Thunder (1977) — 247
Paradise Alley (1978) — 273
Escape from Alcatraz (1979) –299
Hardcore (1979) — 313
The Funhouse (1981) — 331
*Floyd Footnote — 351
INDEX — 373