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"Anybody ask what happened, tell 'em you've been hit by a truck: Mack Truck Turner!" Erudite rowdiness is Jonathan Kaplan's forte, from glass towers to the gutter emerges a subtle picture of Los Angeles as a city of a thousand bail-bonds offices (one sports a Gauguin amid its grungy bric-à-brac). The camera notices an autographed Otis Redding album as it pans across a messy bedroom (cf. Russell's Billion Dollar Brain), it finds Isaac Hayes' bare torso slumbering with pistol holster and marmalade cat. Out of the gridiron and into the bounty-hunting business, "a bulldog with eyes up its ass" to his foes and "a slice of chocolate cake" to the whistling women at the salon where Nichelle Nichols presides as pendulous madam. Quick bursts compose the action as Turner and his partner (Alan Weeks) chase "a dog among pimps" (Paul Harris) by car, then on foot through a reservoir, then on wheels again and finally into a barroom brawl. (The riotous sense of superabundance has a topless blonde moll unleashed with blade in hand just as a shootout winds down.) "A bucket of blood" is the cost of vengeance, Yaphet Kotto in blue suit and pearl cane leads assassins. "Your ass is into hot water without a boat!" Brutal and splashy, each frame rich with detail and cameos (Scatman Crothers, Dick Miller and Charles Cyphers float through the pungent whirl of hustle). Hayes with his revolver's barrel filling half the Panavision screen is as iconic as Dirty Harry, Nichols breathes fire in monologues that surely excited Elmore Leonard's jealousy. The hospital showdown anticipates Woo's Hard Boiled and is capped with a striking lift from Mean Streets (Keitel's intoxication with seesawing lenses), a charming spoof of Breakfast at Tiffany's wraps things up. With Annazette Chase, Stan Shaw, and Sam Laws.
--- Fernando F. Croce |