Welcome! Also, Three From Westlake

Welcome to my first foray into newsletter writing. A perfectly reasonable question you might have is why am I publishing a newsletter when I already have a blog and what’s different about this format? I’m still working that out for myself, however my thinking was that I could focus on formal film reviews, festival reports, and other more “official” kinds of articles on the blog while here I can ramble a bit more causally. One of the stalwarts of the Kino Ventura blog was the monthly “new to me” posts and midway through 2025 I lost the appetite to keep writing them. I was still writing, to be certain, but I was growing weary of writing a dozen capsule reviews monthly and shooting them out into the ether with little or no feedback. Also, some of the things exciting me were not film related; I started writing comic book reviews for my friends at Odd Mart in Minneapolis and also got swept up in some crime television series for the first time in a very long time. My thinking is that I can transfer some of that energy and discussion to this newsletter. I’m mostly a film writer so you can expect a lot of film content here, but I’d also like to write about other expressions of crime fiction whether that be in books, comics, television, or even other media from other creators. My other hope with this is that some people may be more inclined to engage or reply to an email newsletter than they tend to with the blog outlet. I have already received several more notes and emails regarding my zine than I ever have writing on public facing blogs and I truly enjoy reading what other crime film fans think about my work, the movies they recommend, and discovering the projects they are working on. Lastly, this newsletter will be a chance to update people with what I’m working on/publishing without my hoping that some social media algorithm gets it in front of the right eyeballs. So thanks for reading and giving this a chance. I’m going to try to keep it interesting and I’d love to hear what you think.

There was a time when being a fan of Donald Westlake/Richard Stark was a kind of secret handshake in the world of crime fiction. Some of his books were hard to come by and though his fans were quite loyal and enthusiastic, he never had the name recognition of Jim Thompson or James Ellroy. I can’t claim that my appreciation for Westlake’s writing stretches back quite that far, but I’ve been an avid reader of his for years now and have seen many of the film adaptations (of wildly varying quality) of his work as well as the many films he wrote himself. This could be confirmation bias on my end, but it seems to me that the culture is much more aware of Westlake or at least familiar with some of his larger contributions to the cinematic universe (The Grifters screenplay if nothing else) which is why I find it so surprising that there were THREE films adapting Westlake’s work in the past year and I’ve seen very little discussion of that fact.

The three films’ Play Dirty, The Actor, and No Other Choice, are ample testament to the breadth and diversity of Westlake’s output. Dirty is yet another attempt to bring Westlake’s most iconic creation, Parker, to the screen. You could be forgiven for thinking that Parker is some kind of elusive chimera composed of mutable characteristics due to the wild variety of efforts to translate the hardboiled thief to motion pictures. Versions of Parker have been played by Lee Marvin, Anna Karina, Jim Brown, Robert Duvall, Mel Gibson, Jason Statham, and now Mark Wahlberg just to name a few. However the Parker of the Stark novels is singular and consistent; always ruthless and pragmatic (though he sticks to his own brand of honor) and always large and powerful:

“His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. … His face was a chipped hunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx.”

Westlake himself stated that he envisioned Jack Palance as a physical stand in for Parker and arguably the closest filmmakers have gotten is Lee Marvin in Point Blank (though I have never seen and would very much like to watch Mise à sac featuring Michel Constantine). All this is to say, I am mostly puzzled by the decisions various directors and producers make when they adapt the character. I confess I was not excited to hear that Shane Black was going to release a new Parker film; I like some of Black’s films and dislike others, but I think his tone is better suited to Westlake’s comedic novels (of which there are SO many to choose from). I was even less excited to learn that Mark Wahlberg would be portraying Parker on screen and then hearing that Amazon was unceremoniously dumping it onto their Prime platform didn’t fill me with optimism either. Still, I tried to adopt an impartial attitude and judge the film on its own merits when it finally did release; but I did not resonate with this version at all. My main gripe is the look of the film; regardless of how you envision the characters, the feel of the film should be gritty. It doesn’t have to be a period piece, but the surroundings should be lived-in and practical. Black’s vision for this film seems to be a mega-budget blockbuster on a direct-to-streaming bankroll. The whole movie is awash in cheap digital sheen and goofy visual effects. For all the changes made to the source material, the film was still set in NYC but shot in Australia and the result is a frequently green screened inauthentic nowhere. Wahlberg was serviceable in his role but the character feels inconsistent and his motivations become murky. LaKeith Stanfield is a genuinely inspired choice to play Parker’s comparatively flamboyant partner in crime, Grofield, I just wish he was in a better film. The responses to the movie I’ve read tend to be either mildly disappointed Shane Black fans who wanted another Nice Guys or deeply irritated Parker fans who just want a film they can celebrate. I was pleased to learn through various interviews that Black is a huge fan of the source novels and I believe he was trying to do right by Westlake’s work; but it’s hard to maintain the spirit of one of crime fiction’s most hardboiled characters amidst CGI racehorses and snowmobiles. For a more charitable view of Play Dirty from some folks who know Westlake’s writing far better than I do, I’d recommend the excellent Tough Business site.

The Actor, from director Duke Johnson (Anomalisa), is the furthest departure from Parker stories as one could reasonably manage. Based on what was one of Westlake’s unpublished manuscripts, Memory, that he originally wrote in the 60s but was not released until after his death. Only tangentially a crime story, it focuses on an actor (Paul Cole) who wakes up in a unfamiliar hospital after suffering a beating from a man who’s wife he was sleeping with. The beating leaves Cole with persistent memory gaps and the hospital stay leaves him essentially destitute so he has to find means of survival in a small town with the hopes he can one day return to New York (the address on his identification) and regain his complete faculties. The story is unlike most of Westlake’s writing and Johnson’s film leans into the psychological surrealism of amnesia resulting in a mannered, dreamy snow globe of a film. There’s a degree of artifice to the presentation and I can understand how some viewers would struggle to connect with the material, but I found André Holland’s performance as Paul to have sufficient emotional resonance that lends stakes to the layered unreality of the film. It should come as no surprise considering Johnson’s previous film that The Actor contends very directly with ideas of identity and how we perceive and are perceived by others. Something mentioned in the book but realized in a literal fashion in the film are how types of people seem to repeat themselves in the world and several of the (excellent) supporting actors play multiple roles; doppelgangers of themselves that further disorient Paul in his quest to determine his own sense of self. I don't know where a film like this fits into the modern media landscape, but I kept thinking there's something about The Actor that's spiritually connected to an especially good BBC Play for the Day or Christmas special. It was in theaters and is available to stream now, but I notice Neon did not include it in their “for your consideration” set that they distribute to press and critics. I hope that it finds its audience, but I fear it may be lost in the shuffle this year.

Not lost in the shuffle and very much included in Neon’s FYC set is Park Chan-Wook’s adaptation of The Ax: No Other Choice. Park’s latest is already in awards conversations and gracing some best of the year lists. How I determine my criteria for what makes a work “hardboiled” is somewhat arcane but I did not think Choice fit the bill otherwise it would have absolutely made my 2025 list and likely at the number one spot. Westlake’s novel is a righteously furious story of a man who after enduring a layoff lasting two years decides not only to assassinate another man who holds a job he’d like, but also killing off other likely candidates in his industry. There is some jet black humor in Westlake’s novel, but it feels driven by rage. Kind Hearts and Coronets via the lens of Falling Down. Park’s version is less angry, less bloody, more patient, and far weirder than the original. It’s as genre defying as you might expect from Park; at times it’s a Chabrol-ian domestic noir, at other times a dark slapstick comedy, and it all works to underscore a scathing indictment of capitalist systems and our own aspirations within them. It’s immaculately done. The film itself is gorgeous and the primary characters, played by Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin, are tremendously, sometimes heartbreakingly performed. There’s a lot of extreme emotional landscape to traverse for this paper mill manager turned serial murderer and Lee applies himself to the task so very well. The novel reads largely as a critique on American Economics post-Reagan. How automation and insatiable corporate greed led to a collapse of middle class sustainability. However, it’s nearly impossible to not see the corollaries with the post-tech/AI 21st Century working world. This is part of why Park Chan-Wook’s version feels contemporary and relevant even though he doesn’t greatly modify the set-up from the source. Our collective economic anxieties are still largely fueled by the same dehumanizing forces and our powerlessness is perhaps even more pronounced. However, I don’t believe either Westlake or Park leave “us” (either as workers or consumers) free from blame. They see the whole project as suspect. The material signifiers and the middle class pursuit (the houses and cars and computers we feel we deserve) are as much under critique as the macroeconomic systems that reign over them. After my first viewing, I came away thinking Choice does meander a bit towards the midpoint but it also contains some of the most memorable sequences of anything I’ve seen all year. I’m looking forward to seeing it theatrically when it releases here because it’s still clear the Park is working on a brilliant level and I think those details will cohere for me on a second sitting.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading and I hope you subscribe. I’d love to know about your favorite Westlake adaptation, favorite Westlake works, or some way that I can finally see Mise à sac. I imagine if you’re reading this you’re already aware of my blog, but you should check that out and read my 2025 Year in Review post if you haven’t yet. Happy New Year!