I get there's always a market for a thriller but it was odd EMI Films made this. Perhaps they were seduced by the name of Richard Stark/Donald Westlake - but really it needed a bigger name than Peter Coyote, even if he was coming off ET.
It's an odd duck - Coyote is Stone (Parker), a tough professional crim who works with an incompetent getaway driver who causes a crash that kills a nine year old girl. This prompts the girl's father to hire a killer to take out the crooks and the film turns into a kind of slasher with crims being offed one by one, and Coyote fleeing to England.
It was a mistake to have the accident kill a nine year old girl because I was all on the side of the father. The film tries to soften Stone by having him stop and inspect the dead body and express guilt about it but... sorry. If they'd killed a grown wife or something it would have propelled the plot just the same... I think killing off a kid just feels mean.
Stone never gets the chance to do anything tough until the end and even then it's mostly because the killer is being silly announcing himself. The killer acts as if he's in The Shadow and kills everyone who Stone helps - Mel Smith his friend (his death was a downer), a girl, his lawyer. Stone is toxic.
Why did EMI ever thing this was commercial?
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