rlyman59 The movie is based on Donald Westlake's (Writing under the Pseudonym Richard Stark) classic crime suspense novel SLAYGROUND, featuring the sociopath profession criminal, Parker, from a series of books with that same character. The director of the movie apparently decided he didn't like the books or their main character. In this stupid and clichéd thriller, he uses neither. More or less, the director or producer, whoever made this inept decision, simply took the title of the novel and cooked up a script bearing no relation to the book or any in the series, in order to suite what they believed would be something better. If you're looking for the Parker from the Richard Stark PARKER novels, forget about it. He's been replaced by a small time hood who spews out lines like, "I'm a thief, not a killer." "I'm afraid." "I've never killed anybody." I'm sure if you're a fan of those novels you don't need to hear anymore. I've saved you from wasting your money on this abysmal take on SLAYGROUND. It's a shame, too, because the book would have made a classic movie, but they chose to film something else.

Scarecrow-88 This is one of those movies where a robbery leads to an accidental murder(the driver's reckless speeding causes a car crash resulting in the death of a little girl; the dead girl's father sending out the hit on those responsible)with those involved paying a steep price for the hit and run. Peter Coyote is Stone, your garden variety criminal who is on the lam after a hired assassin kills his partners. Stone is shot in the back, when the assassin almost guns him down in a seemingly abandoned service station, which leaves metal in his spine that needs surgical repair or else he'll be confined to a wheel chair. He heads for London after sending his wife to Mexico for her own safety. In London is an old pal of his Terry Abbatt(Mel Smith), once an "associate"(in other words, the two worked on certain robberies together), who owes Stone for saving his life. But, the hit-man will follow suit which concludes in Terry's amusement park late at night.Cold, uninvolving thriller with even Peter Coyote, oftentimes quite reliable, failing to register. Lone asset, in my opinion, is the moody photography by Stephen Smith and Herb Wagreich, particularly the night sequences featuring the enigmatic killer in his hat, where the director keeps, for the most part, his face concealed. The violence is left off-screen and all we get are murky "after the act" shots of the victims.

nomoons11 its pretty obvious that before you even watch this, just by looking at the cast of the film at IMDb, that this is not an A class film. The budget was pretty small to say the least but more frustrating was it seemed that the film was just missing a lot of parts that could have helped out the watch-ability of it.The first part right off was the mysterious guy who comes after the three robbers to kill em all for the bad thing they did (kill a little girl by accident). They give you no indication at how he figures out who killed the girl and how he always finds where everyone's at so he can go kill all the perpetrators. The villain is no mystic and can't see the future so it's like, "how does he know who did it?" They could have added 15 to 20 minutes of filler to this film and it would have helped quite a bit on my rating of it but to make us believe this assassin/hit-man appears in all these places with no way of knowing at how he finds the guys is just a "gimme a break" type of deal. The bummer is at the end where our "parker"esque actor (Peter Coyote) kills the villain, like you'd expect, it's no-one we know throughout the film. It's just a weird guy.In the middle of the film the Peter Coyote character is sprayed with bullets from a machine in the back and he's placed in the hospital. A few scenes after he escapes the hospital and you see the scar he has on his back, it's the entire length of his spine. My first thought was "geez, this guy is superman". There's no way on this earth anyone could have gotten up a few days after this and just walked away.I'm a huge fan of the Parker series but this was a total let down. This one begs to be remade but I can't see that happening. For better Parker goodness, try Point Blank or Payback or The Outfit. You'll be well rewarded.

Driver-5 Starting in New York and ending in Blackpool, SLAYGROUND is an unusual crime thriller which was quite a flop when first released (it was one of the few films Thorn EMI not only distributed but produced also) and was never seen by that many people. Based on one of the "Parker" novels written by Richard Stark (POINT BLANK and PAYBACK were also based on this series), SLAYGROUND stars Peter Coyote, British comedian Mel Smith (from Smith and Jones), in a rare dramatic role, and Billie Whitelaw. If you like tough crime thrillers, track it down.