The Killer Elite: James Caan’s Brown Suede Jacket
James Caan in The Killer Elite (1975)
Vitals
James Caan as Mike Locken, government mercenary
San Francisco, Spring 1975
Film: The Killer Elite
Release Date: December 19, 1975
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Costume Designer: Ray Summers
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The Godfather co-stars and real-life friends James Caan and Robert Duvall reunited as rival mercenaries in The Killer Elite, widely released fifty years ago today on December 19, 1975, following its L.A. premiere two days earlier. Adapted by Marc Norman and Stirling Silliphant from Robert Syd Hopkins novel Monkey in the Middle, the film’s mixed reception hasn’t improved much with age, and Caan himself considered it a dud that he took merely to work with director Sam Peckinpah—even if Peckinpah’s creative control was limited by United Artists.
The Killer Elite takes a lighter, action-oriented hand to the anti-government paranoia that defined ’70s thrillers, capitalizing on the easy chemistry between Caan and Duvall who portray the friends-turned-foes on opposing sides in a San Francisco proxy war. They begin the story as Mike Locken (Caan) and George Hansen (Duvall), colleagues in ComTeg—a private intelligence network often hired by the government. “What’s that? ‘Circumsized Italian Americans’?” Mike jokes when they’re asked if they work for the CIA.
After George double-crosses Mike by crippling him with .22-caliber shots to the elbow and knee, as well as killing the VIP they were assigned to protect, the badly wounded Mike has gone from being his former bosses’ “number one boy” to “Humpty Dumpty”, relegated to desk work. Seeking revenge and determined to overcome his limited mobility, Mike trains extensively in martial arts to regain his fighting shape and take on his old nemesis, who has resumed his mercenary work in a world where “heroism has become old-fashioned… and the cleft-chins and true hearts are out.”
Finally, he gets the chance when ComTeg recruits Mike back into the fold, allowing him to subcontract his own team of a driver and backup man to safeguard a visiting politician against George’s team of assassins. Despite his bosses’ misgivings about them, Mike recruits his old pals Mac (Burt Young) and Jerome Miller (Bo Hopkins), reassuring the latter: “You’re not a psycho, you’re the patron-poet of the manic-depressives.”
Sure, the plot gets a bit muddied, partially the result of on-set rewrites between Peckinpah, Caan, and Young (and, by Caan’s own admission, plenty of cocaine), but The Killer Elite is best enjoyed when not taken too seriously, standing out among other ’70s action thrillers as the first mainstream American film to feature ninjas.
What’d He Wear?
Perhaps the most elite aspect of The Killer Elite is its super-’70s style, from Robert Duvall’s cozy wool shirt-jackets to James Caan’s rust-hued rotation of sportswear. For the entire second half of the film, Caan’s Mike Locken embarks on his killer mission in a brown suede racer jacket over a ribbed turtleneck—echoing Steve McQueen’s similar look at the start of Le Mans (1971).
Caan’s waist-length jacket is crafted from a tobacco-brown suede—perhaps an overly vulnerable fabric for a few days of gunfights and ninja-fights, but I can respect Mike wanting to look sharp for his comeback after a few months out of work in recovery. The unlined jacket has five matching four-hole buttons up the front, plus a short standing neckband with an additional button on a pointed tab. The set-in sleeves are finished with cuffs that mimic this neckband with a single-button closure through a pointed end. The side pockets each have a slanted welt entry.
Swollen seams extend across the chest and upper back, continuing down the length of each sleeve. Two additional seams on the back slant slightly inward down from this upper yoke to the waistband for a tapered profile that emphasizes Caan’s already wide shoulders. A short square-ended tab on each side of the waistband closes through one of two buttons to further adjust the fit around the waist.
Mike maintains the contemporary action-hero aesthetic with his turtleneck, made from a black ribbed fabric which appears to be a cotton-dominant jersey-knit—either 100% cotton or a cotton blend reinforced with synthetic fibers like acrylic or nylon for extra durability and stretch.
Mike’s brown flat-front trousers are very representative of ’70s fashions: presenting with a shine suggesting artificial fibers, no pockets, and narrow through the thighs then dramatically flared out over the plain-hemmed bottoms. The lack of visible outer pockets leans more toward fashion than function, as you’d expect an armed mercenary to want more than just his two jacket pockets for the tools of his trade. Trousers without significant pockets were a disco-era favorite, extending even to Roger Moore’s stylish portrayal of James Bond, whose tailored trousers through the ’70s only had the occasional shallow pocket with a hidden slit-entry along the belt-line.
Mike’s flared, pocket-less trousers are quintessentially ’70s, designed more to look suave when gliding across a disco floor than for functionally serving him while fighting teams of ninja assassins.
Mike holds the trousers up with a brown leather belt that closes through a large curved gold-finished single-prong buckle. He naturally maintains these nutty tones from his jacket, trousers, and belt down to his feet, sporting a set of bicycle-toe ankle boots with reddish-brown mahogany uppers that darken at the stress points and seams. The hefty black heels boost Caan’s height for a more imposing presence, though this may not have ben very comfortable for poor Mike Locken, already beleaguered by a cane and leg-brace while recovering from his gunshot wounds.
Mike’s socks—naturally also brown—are briefly flashed during the fight sequence but otherwise go unseen as the trousers’ flared bottoms envelop the raised shafts of his boots.
When Mike drives up to meet Jerome Miller, who is inexplicably trap shooting with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, he layers a black wool thigh-length coat over his racer jacket. While the cloth and cut echo naval-inspired pea coats, the differences are too numerous to truly qualify.
Mike’s double-breasted coat has eight black-finished buttons in a 8×4 arrangement that extends from just below Caan’s waist up to the neck, with the top row of buttons in the middle of a reinforced shoulder yoke that covers his upper chest and back. The coat also has set-in sleeves that end with single-button semi-strap cuffs, a single vent, and slanted side pockets.
Under his roll-neck, Mike likely continues wearing the tan- and teal-beaded puka shell necklace that adds a dash of surfer insouciance to his vibe. He also wears a gold wristwatch with a round silver case on a flat gold herringbone-style bracelet.
The Car
Mike drives his own purple 1974 Porsche 911 Targa to Mac’s garage, where he requests “something heavy, something fast… something that’ll blend in” to be the group’s work car, so Mac provides a 1969 Plymouth Belvedere taxicab that has been customized with reinforced bumpers, steel-plated body and bulletproof glass, and a “fully blown engine”.
The Porsche never gets much screen-time beyond this, so it doesn’t get much action or even angles beyond the front and driver’s side, but we see enough to know that it has the special-order “Aubergine” paint code (025) and the “Targa” top with a stainless steel-clad roll bar that Porsche introduced for the 1966 model year, intended to address NHTSA rollover safety requirements when exporting to the U.S. market.
The 1974 model year marked the beginning of the 911’s G-series, which would remain in production through 1989 before Porsche introduced the heavily revised 964. All North American-market 1974 911 Targa models were powered by Porsche’s 2.7-liter air-cooled flat-six, with output ranging from 150 horsepower in the base 911 to 175 horsepower in the fuel-injected 911 S and U.S.-spec Carrera 2.7. Base and S models were available with either four- or five-speed manual transmissions, while the Carrera came standard with a five-speed manual; all models could also be ordered with Porsche’s four-speed “Sportomatic” semi-automatic transmission.
The Guns
Mike demonstrates a preference for revolvers with two-inch barrels, having rotated out his Colt Detective Special from the opening act with a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Model 10. “Notched every one of these little .38s myself, you know,” Mike tells George during their climactic confrontation at the dock, referring to each of the six rounds in his revolver.
After the Colt Detective Special standardized the “snub-nose” segment with its two-inch barrel and six-round cylinder packed with potent .38 Special rounds, Smith & Wesson launched a 2″-barreled variant of what was then known as its “Military & Police” service revolver in the 1930s. This remained Smith & Wesson’s pre-eminent “belly gun” for two decades until they introduced the slimmer five-shot “Chiefs Special” that sacrificed an extra round for easier concealment. By the end of the 1950s, Smith & Wesson’s new numbering system renamed the Military & Police and Chiefs Special as the Model 10 and Model 36, respectively.
When a [fake] cop told him to throw his gun aside, Mike stalled by responding that he can’t because it has a hair trigger, so “if I throw it over there, there’s a lot of people up here that are gonna get hurt.” Of course, a double-action revolver can’t truly have a “hair trigger”, especially when he doesn’t yet have the hammer cocked to render it into single-action mode.
For fiercer firepower, Miller hands his fully automatic MAC-10 to Mike, instructing him to “pull ‘er in tight when you squeeze, she likes to buck.” This blunt-looking machine pistol was designed in 1964 by Gordon Ingram for the Military Armament Corporation (MAC), who marketed it as the “Model 10” or “M-10” before “MAC-10” caught on as a popular but unofficial designation among users and writers.
Built largely from steel stampings, the MAC-10 uses a telescoping open bolt and recycled “Grease Gun” magazines to achieve extreme simplicity and a very high rate of fire, resulting in being criticized for poor accuracy, “fit only for combat in a phone booth” according to International Associations of Police Chiefs weapons researcher David Steele. Still, they’ve been adopted and used by militaries around the world to different extents, including by U.S Special Forces during the Vietnam War and invasion of Grenada.
The first in a series of similar submachine guns, the original MAC-10 was chambered in .45 ACP or 9x19mm Parabellum, fed from 30- and 32-round box magazines, respectively. Its fame was cemented by the distinctive two-stage Sionics suppressor, which dramatically reduced noise and improved controllability in full-auto—especially with naturally subsonic .45 ACP loads—though at the cost of size and concealment once the nearly foot-long suppressor was attached. As wielded in The Killer Elite without the suppressor, a standard MAC-10 measured 10.6 inches long and two inches wide, weighing well over seven pounds with a fully loaded magazine.
Miller hands one of his MAC-10s to Mike during the final sequence, keeping one for himself that has been cosmetically altered to resemble an Uzi.
Miller is established as the team’s weapons expert, and even if his method of loading his “Uzi” leaves something to be desired, I was impressed by how The Killer Elite incorporated this aspect into his personality into the dialogue where he identifies the policeman confronting Mike as a phony: “Look at his gun. Tell me that’s not a 9mm Star and I’ll kiss your ass… San Francisco Police Department packs regulation Smith & Wesson .38s.”
Though Mac’s nickel Colt Government Model 1911A1 is accurately described as “that .45,” The Killer Elite may be one of the few movies of the era that swapped in a 9mm Star Model B for the cosmetically similar .45-caliber M1911A1 without trying to pass it off as one. (At least until the firing scenes, where Mac’s nickel Colt is indeed swapped for a nickel-plated Star, as distinguished by the external extractor.)
How to Get the Look
James Caan in The Killer Elite (1975)
Mike Locken blends fashionable European crime chic with a physical, workmanlike American masculinity as he dresses for his brutal mission in a brown suede jacket and ribbed black turtleneck over clingy brown flared trousers and ankle boots.
- Tobacco-brown suede tapered waist-length racer jacket with standing single-button collar, five-button front, slanted welt-entry side pockets, single-button pointed-tab cuffs, and waist adjuster tabs
- Black ribbed cotton jersey-knit turtleneck
- Brown flat-front trousers with belt loops and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
- Brown leather belt with gold-toned curved single-prong buckle
- Mahogany leather bicycle-toe ankle boots
- Black wool knee-length coat with 8×4-button double-breasted front, ulster collar, slanted side pockets, single-button semi-strap cuffs, and single vent
- Tan-and-teal beaded puka shell necklace
- Gold wristwatch with round silver dial on gold herringbone bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
I know who the bad guys are: anyone that tries to hurt me.
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Having grown up in the Bay Area in the 70’s this movie holds a special place in my heart, just for the nostalgia. I still remember camping trips heading north towards the Sierras, and seeing the mothball fleet in Suisun Bay as we crossed the Benicia-Martinez Bridge.
Great movie and one of the first “ninja” movies.
Never understood the criticism of this movie. Perhaps the plot was a little muddy, but it’s a good example of the popular spy movies of the seventies.