Tomb

“You’ve just ruined two movies for me,” says my friend Keith, as he hands me back my paperback copy of Richard Stark’s The Hunter.

Whoops. Sorry about that, Keith.

The two films in question are Point Blank (1967) and Payback (1999), each adapted from Stark’s extraordinary crime novel. Both are reasonably entertaining films, at least until you read the source material. Then, you find out how the story is supposed to go.

The protagonist (Note: not the hero. Definitely not the hero) of the novel is Parker, a fascinatingly amoral career criminal who gets betrayed by his partner at the end of a successful heist. After shrugging off a gunshot wound and a prison stint, Parker walks into Manhattan with no cash, no ID and no connections. He has revenge on his mind — and he’s looking for his cut of the payout, too. When he finds out that his betrayer is under the protection of The Outfit, a vast criminal enterprise, Parker doesn’t even slow down. He bulldozes his way through lackeys and bodyguards before finding his ex-partner, eventually killing him bare-handed. And when he’s unable to get his share of the cash from the heist, he goes after The Outfit to get it.

Parker turned out to be a surprisingly durable protagonist, and Richard Stark (a pseudonym for novelist Donald E. Westlake) made him the central figure of 24 novels, from The Hunter (1962) through to Dirty Money (2008). These stories are addictive, and now’s a good time to check out the character in print, since the first 15 novels are currently being reprinted by the University of Chicago press.

Despite his success on the page, Parker has proved a difficult character for film adaptation. Jean-Luc Godard tried it first with Made in U.S.A. (1966), based on Parker’s sixth novel, The Jugger (1965), but pointlessly, the director made Parker into a female reporter, without even bothering to buy the rights to the book. As a result, the film hasn’t been legally available in this country until its DVD release last year.

John Boorman’s Point Blank works quite well in its own way, particularly with the casting of Lee Marvin in the lead. Lots of cool elements from the book survive, but he has made some odd changes. For example, Parker (or rather, “Walker,” in this version) never actually kills anybody. He shoots telephones, cares people off of buildings, or makes them walk into traps he has set up. The opening flashback is quite weird, with the treacherous partner wrestling Walker to the ground, bellowing his plans for an illegal operation three inches from Walker’s face — all while in a public area. And why the hell are they robbing Alcatraz, anyway?

Payback, on the other hand, puts genuine madman Mel Gibson in the role of Parker (or rather “Porter” in this version), and there are tantalizing little flashes of the source material hidden in clumps of standard, Hollywood action-movie tropes. The scene in which the ex-partner turns to The Outfit for help (where he gets the “There-are-three-possible-solutions-to-your-problems” speech before getting cut loose to fend for himself) is still intact, and it’s still brilliant. The film has a breezy, entertaining feel to it, which works in its favour, but it’s definitely at odds with the Parker of the novels.

Director Brian Helgeland originally intended to make the story much darker, but he was fired from the project before completion. The DVD release of Payback: Straight Up — The Director’s Cut (2006) feels like a completely different movie. Mel’s voiceover explaining his actions is gone, as are the cool blue-tinted cinematography and upbeat music. Dozens of little cutaway shots and additional dialogue — once designed to make Porter seem like a nice guy — are ditched. Kris Kristofferson’s character never appears; he’s replaced by a female voice on a telephone. And, of course, the dog that gets shot doesn’t magically turn up at the end of the film wearing a bandage. It’s all much closer to Stark’s version of the story, and yet it isn’t as satisfying as the theatrical version of Payback.

Perhaps the character really is too dark to successfully translate into film.