As early as the opening credits, with James Brown burning the soundtrack with "Down and Out in New York City,"
it's clear that Larry Cohen's film is out to take the political reins of blaxploitation Rosetta stone Sweet Sweetback's Baad
Asssss Song, rather than degrading them into easy thrills. In a 1950s prologue, a young Harlem shoeshine boy gets in
a brush with a racist, crooked cop (Art Lund) that lands him in the hospital, battered but still pugnacious. Dissolve to
the '60s, with the snazzy, grown-up Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) strutting his way to a barbershop rubout. Taking up
the racial tensions of his debut Bone, Cohen expands them into gangland tribalism, where Gibbs' ruthless
rise to the top of the underworld is fueled by a ravenous, slum-bred anger. The spawn of black stereotypes (servile maid
mother, absent father), he channels his energies into escaping his roots and usurping the white man's riches -- he buys
his rich lawyer's luxurious apartment and possessions, only to hurl the fur coats out the window. His downfall stems out of
community betrayal as he becomes a "white nigger." In the stunning scene where Williamson gets revenge on Lund by blackening up the cop's face with polish and forcing him to mouth minstrel tunes
before pulping his face with a shoeshine box, the fury is directed as much inwards toward himself as out into the world. The stunning
thematic daring is matched, as usual with Cohen, by his technical roughness -- money shots (a severed ear dropped into
a plate of pasta, a goomba massacre scored to a Nino Rota-via-Isaac Hayes beat) served up with a casual disregard for
matching camera angles. Much richer than the slick Shaft, and a far more pointed glimpse at the upheavals of the '70s.
Cohen shot the (poor) sequel, Hell Up in Harlem, simultaneously. With Gloria Hendry, Julius Harris, D'Urville Martin
and Val Avery.
--- Fernando F. Croce
|