Why is this film so underrated?

I'm a huge fan of the Parker novels written by Richard Stark. Richard Stark was the psuedonym of master writer Donald E. Westlake. Westlake sold a lot of his novels to Hollywood producers. And almost every time they took what a truly superb writer gave them and altered, changed and transmuted that material into sometimes bizarre new entities.

Take Made in USA. No, seriously, take Made in USA!;-) lol

It's a pretty dismal film. The main character in the book it was based on, The Jugger, is a cold-hearted master criminal named Parker. In the film, Parker becomes a woman. A French woman. A French woman journalist! In Full Contact, based on the very first Parker novel, The Hunter, Parker becomes a Chinese undercover cop!

So, while Slayground is hardly a faithful adaptation, the fact Parker--here renamed Stone--remains a master criminal is cause to cheer and rejoice.

The beginning and end bare some resemblence to the novel, but the middle is almost an entirely new creation. If you are a Parker fanatic, as I am, you simply cannot pop this film in your DVD player with the expectation you'll get the "real" Parker.

What you can expect is a fine noir crime thriller with very good acting, score, and cinematography. The direction is a little quirky and it works. This is, I think, the only film Terry Bedford has directed. And that's a shame, because I liked what I saw. There's a dark, gritty, existentialist feel to this movie that sadly only seems be noticed by me and a few others.

Stone and two other bad boys heist an armored car filled with cash in upstate New York. The driver, an inexperienced wannabe, accidentally causes a limo to crash during the getaway, instantly killing it's occupants, which includes a young girl. Stone is remorseful and his initial instinct is to kill the brash wannabe who caused the crash unneccessarily, but he calms down and decides the best thing to do is move on, and heads his own way.

The child's father, however, has different plans. He hires an eerie hitman to kill the people responsible for the crash. How the assassin figures out it was the thieves is anyone's guess. The assassin, however, does seem at times almost supernatural, like a phantom or wraith.

As his crime crew gets killed by this shadowy assassin (admittedly played over the top), Stone refuses to give into what seems like an inevitable death and does everything in his power to keep drawing breath. He eventually escapes to England, to seek possible salvation from an old friend who's life he once saved in a botched robbery.

But it's to no avail--the friend ends up as yet another victim to "The Shadow Man" and Stone realizes it must end one way or another in the closed-down amusement park the creepy hitman lures him to. Stone and the Shadow Man, mano a mano, is man against fate, death, destiny, in all it's existential glory! OK--that's a bit too much; but it really is the way I saw it.

So, my final statement is this is a very well done crime thriller that has gone under the radar for decades. Is it a lost masterpiece, that will drop jaws and pop eyes upon viewing? No. But I do think, however, it's a polished little gem most have failed to recognize.