AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Nonureva Really Surprised!

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

SnoopyStyle In 1953, young Tommy Gibbs helps a mobster kill his target and then later beaten by a crooked cop. He spends time in prison and in 1965, Tommy (Fred Williamson) takes on a contract from mob boss Cardoza without authority. He convinces Cardoza to give him one full block in exchange for being their secret kill squad. He slowly gains power and influence bringing him in conflict with the ruling Mafia.This remake is surprisingly good. It is violent. Williamson is iconic. The story telling is a bit disjointed. The barbershop scene has some scary violence. The shaky hand with a straight razor is very uncomfortable. There is a ground level edgy reality to all the scenes in Harlem. The most iconic scene is probably Tommy leaving Tiffany. It's obvious filmed guerrilla style. Many of the passerby seems clueless and confused by the action. It would be nice to do more with the other characters. There are great individual scenes like the mobster forcing Tommy to shine his shoe. This is high level blaxploitation.

Adam Peters (73%) Without a doubt one of the better blaxploitation movies ever to be spawned from the 1970's era. Fred Williamson is pretty perfect in the lead role playing a character that is far away from being the good guy, or hero of the movie, as he ruthlessly takes whatever he can get, and with force if needs be. And like a lot of these movies they tried to please the audience with a mix of drama and action which works well, so too James Brown's super cool soundtrack. Of course the movie isn't perfect (the pace goes AWOL at times, and the small budget is pushed to the limit), but overall this is a fine example of the breed, with a good(ish) morality tale at its heart.

preppy-3 Movie starts out in 1953 where we see young black Tommy Gibbs doing jobs for the mob. He starts developing his own little gang. As he gets older (and becomes Fred Williamson) he works his way into the white mob--even though they don't want "ni**ers" (as they say throughout the film). Then he steals some damaging ledgers and uses it to run crime in the city, help black people and keep the evil white people at bay. But the white guys in the mob aren't about to give up...Perhaps I'm not the best person to review a Larry Cohen movie--he's the producer, writer and director of this. I've never liked any of his movies and he makes really bad low budget films (unlike Roger Corman who makes good ones). This one is full of goofs--I love it when you hear a baby crying on the soundtrack but you can clearly see that the baby isn't making a sound! This is full of bad dialogue and has a very predictable script. This is the type of gangster film Hollywood was making in the 1930s--it's just done with black characters now. The movie also contains plenty of swearing and some pretty graphic bloody violence. Also I can't think of any film I've ever seen that has such a negative view of women--they're either vicious witches, use sex to get what they want or are slapped around left and right. It doesn't help at all that Gloria Hendry (the main victim) gives a terrible performance.To be truthful I was struggling to stay awake. The bursts of violence helped and Williamson is tall, handsome and pretty good in the title role. But the technical goofs (there are plenty) and the by the numbers story got annoying. Poorly made on a low budget. Check out "Foxy Brown", "Coffy" or "Blacula" for a good blaxploitation film.

khallgist I loved it when I saw it at a drive-in on at date a "hundred" years ago when it first came out and I still love it!! I knew Fred Williamson when he was a player for the KC Chiefs and I thought he was super cool then and super cool as an actor later. I was so shocked this week when I mentioned him to the young people I work with and not one of them had ever heard of him. These were supposed KC Chiefs fans! I've been steering all of them to this website to learn more about Fred. He used to hang out in the Kansas City singles bars and that's where I met him years ago. I remember he drove a black Porsche and was so cool. Later I loved all of his movies from the 1970s and 1980s, but I didn't know until now that he was still making movies. I'm anxious to see some of the new ones now.