Cast: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Vernon, Sharon Acker, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor, Lloyd Bochner, Michael Strong, James Sikking, Sandra Warner, Roberta Haynes, Kathleen Freeman, Lawrence Hauben, Victor Creatore, Susan Holloway, Sid Haig, Michael Bell, Priscilla Boyd, John McMurtry, Ron Walters, George Strattan, Nicole Rogel, Roland La Starza, Rico Cattani
Walker (Marvin), Mal Reese (Vernon), and Lynne (Acker) watch as two men prepare an improvised landing pad on Alcatraz Island. A helicopter makes a nighttime landing, staying just long enough to exchange a satchel for a box. Mal shoots the two men and takes the satchel. Walker waits in a cell of the abandoned federal prison as Mal counts the money in the satchel. Lynne joins Walker, and they are together when Mal arrives, shoots Walker, and departs with the money and Lynne, leaving Walker for dead. But the wounded Walker stumbles out of the prison and manages to swim toward San Francisco. Walker reappears years later, fit and wearing a well-cut suit, on a boat tour of Alcatraz. He meets Yost (Wynn), a shadowy government agent that offers to help him get back the money taken from him. Yost tells Walker that Mal Reese used the money from the heist to buy his way back into a powerful criminal organization. It is the organization that Yost is after, and he expects that Walker will help him destroy it. Yost gives Walker his wife Lynne’s address in Los Angeles. Walker bursts into Lynne’s apartment, expecting to find Mal there, but Lynne tells him Mal has moved on, she does not know where he lives. Her only contact with Mal is through a courier that delivers cash every month. Lynne is racked with guilt, she has lost her way. She recounts the day they first met, on the docks, Walker a bit drunk and still wearing his U.S. Navy jacket. Their times together were the best of her life. Then, somehow, she drifted toward Mal, Walker’s best friend. It was Mal’s need for cash that prompted the heist at Alcatraz. Walker falls asleep on Lynne’s couch, and when he wakes he finds her dead of a drug overdose. Walker sets out to find Reese. He wants revenge, and his money back. From the syndicate’s courier, Walker learns of John Stegman (Strong), a car dealer and a front man for the organization. With disciplined brutality, Walker goes after Reese and the crime organization’s henchmen protecting him. After enduring some rough treatment from Walker, Stegman tells him that Reese is seeing Chris (Dickinson), Lynne’s sister. Walker’s visit to Chris starts a romantic relationship, and she provides information about the organization. Directed by Reese, Stegman attempts to eliminate Walker. When this fails, Reese appeals to Frederick Carter (Bochner), a top organization executive. The organization sets a trap for Walker, but Chris alerts him, and she uses her wiles to help him get to Reese. Walker’s determination and his unequivocal morality of duty and accountability make him almost a primordial, unstoppable force, but the organization is slow to grasp the danger he poses. Set in mid-1960’s Los Angeles and San Francisco. Outstanding editing by Henry Berman. Music by Johnny Mandel. Based on the novel The Hunter by Richard Stark.
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