The Dynamite Brothers

TNT Smacks On

The Dynamite Brothers
aka Stud Brown
USA 1974 Directed by Al Adamson
IIP/Severin Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: This one’s got some major spoilerage in it.
There is a genuinely cool twist in the tail of this
movie which I didn’t see coming.

Well this Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection really is a rollercoaster ride in terms of just how good or, typically, how terrible some of the films in this collection are going to be. Because I’m watching and writing these films up in the order they’ve been packaged into the box, as opposed to the release or production dates (both of which are completely different things anyway), my previous review of an Adamson film was Black Heat (reviewed here), which utilised one of the same leading men as in this one, in a shot at catching some cash from the blaxploitation market. You’ll also remember I didn’t think much of it.

This film, however, is absolutely marvellous. It’s a greatly entertaining flick that I could happily rewatch every seven years or so. The Dynamite Brothers is basically a mash up of two genres which were still just about a big thing at the time this was released... blaxploitation and kung fu movies. It made some money and Adamson was able to re-release the film targeted at just the blaxploitation market a year later, by excising the kung-fu part of the trailer and re-christening it Stud Brown.

After a kung fu training session to show how lethal some of the bad guy’s henchmen are, we meet the main antagonist of the film himself and... it’s James Hong! I love the fact that James Hong turns up in an Adamson movie. He plays ‘over the top but sophisticated Asian villain’ really well, it has to be said. That’s the pre-credits sequence of the movie out of the way, leading to an animated title sequence featuring the two leads, Alan Tang and Timothy Brown... and a load of kung fu people, with Charles Earland’s kick ass score playing out over the titles. Actually, this is the only Al Adamson film I’ve found to date, other than his Dracula VS Frankenstein (reviewed here), which has had a CD soundtrack release so, that’s something.

After this, film starts off proper... with martial arts star Alan Tang as Larry Chin. He is illegally entering the country on a boat but, as he jumps off the ship, a bunch of Hong’s henchmen are waiting for him to persuade him to go back to Japan (under the watchful eye of ‘bent copper in the pay of the bad guys’ Burke, played by Aldo Ray). So straight away we have a big chase/kung fu fight on the harbour which establishes how outclassed the bad guys are compared to Larry, who leaves a trail of unconscious bodies in his wake as he runs off to... to what? Well, it turns out he’s come to America to find his lost brother. There are also hints of a back story in some, it has to be said, shoddily timed little flashbacks to a dead woman at various moments in the film. I'll get to that later.

Meanwhile, Burke is escorting the newly arrested Stud Brown (Timothy Brown) in a police car, to be charged for ‘unimportant and never really made clear’ crimes. However, he also finds Larry Chin and so he handcuffs him together with Stud. Of course, the two of them together are presumably spiritually sympathetic so, you know, in a daring escape they presumably become... The Dynamite Brothers... of the title. Anyway, there must be some spiritual connection because, after freeing themselves from handcuffs, the two stay together for absolutely no reason at all. Larry is headed to San Fransisco and Stud takes him to work for his boss, a mobster called Smilin’ Man, played by Don Oliver, so he can support himself while he looks for his brother.

And, of course, this is a blaxploitation movie of the 1970s... so there are evil, bad mobsters like James Hong’s kung fu crew... contrasted with ‘good mobsters’ like Smilin’ Man’s mob, who don’t want any drugs coming into their territory because ‘drugs are bad’ and people shouldn’t do them. Right on brother! It’s here that, in another ‘character with a strange quirk in a 1970s movie moment’, Stud meets a mute lady on Similin’ Man’s payroll called Sarah, played by the title role actress from black exorcist movie Abby... Carol Speed. She becomes Stud’s gal. There’s also a potential girlfriend for Larry when he meets an Asian lady who helps him find a lead to his brother but, she kinda just drops out of the movie once Larry is told that his brother is dead.

So the rest of the movie is about both how Larry’s missing brother and the mob war is all connected and there are various shoot outs and kung fu fights and... the whole thing is a pretty entertaining and surprisingly coherent movie (for Al Adamson) which entertains a lot. Although, it’s a shame that Carol Speed’s character is killed by having her face horribly slashed up by the bad guys to give Stud even extra motivation to end the violent mob reign of her killers.

It all leads to a big fight in Hong’s mansion where we finally find out that those flashbacks were him remembering his wife, who was killed by Hong for rejecting his lustful advances before fleeing to America. Not only that but, in a twist I didn’t see coming, somehow, it turns out that not only is Larry’s brother not dead... but James Hong’s character is also his brother. So, anyway, all the good guys and bad guys converge on the house and a big battle royale ensues while the Hongster makes a break for it in his open topped car, with Larry pursuing on a motor bike. As soon as I saw it was an open topped car I realised that I was once again going to have to watch, possibly from a different angle, that same scene of the open topped car rolling off a cliff edge and killing the driver that I’ve seen now in, it has to be said, a fair few of Adamson’s movies. I honestly can’t be watching this footage again in another movie... but saying that, it’ll probably be coming back to haunt me again before this boxed set is finished, I would imagine. There’s also a stunt fall in this movie, during a gun battle on the streets (surprisingly, there were no Adamson rooftop chases in this picture, he must have had a bigger budget) which I’m pretty sure he recycled into Black Heat but, it certainly packs more power here.

And it’s a fairly joyful film to watch, it has to be said. There are some great fights which use some hand held stuff and some frenetic pacing... but not so much so that you can’t see that Alan Tang can actually do all the stunt fighting himself (unlike a lot of modern American movies where they sometimes have to cut around the actors to hide the fact that they can’t really do the physical stuff that well). Actually, I noticed that in some of the fight scenes, Alan Tang seems to be mouthing a lot of words that are just not coming out on the soundtrack at all. I can only conclude that, like Bruce Lee in the fight scenes in Enter The Dragon, he was probably making a lot of silly, whoop and wahaaah noises but, on hearing the results, the producers decided to cut that audio element for whatever reason (like it sounded totally silly, perhaps).

Added to this we have a good cast of actors doing their thing with a script that really isn’t all that bad and, also, the good guys and gals all have good on-screen chemistry and are pretty likeable. There are even some nicely creative shots in here, where Adamson and the cinematographer use the negative shapes created by various elements of the environment overhanging the foreground of the camera to shoot the action through, which gives the film a more creative edge than a fair few of the films I’ve reviewed from this boxed set here. Add to this a totally redundant snake scene and a silly but underwhelming ‘death by acupuncture’ moment and The Dynamite Brothers comes up trumps when it comes to excelling in explosive excitement. Definitely something I’d recommend for lovers of blaxploitation, kung fu movies and, you know, those rare times both elements come together in the same film. One of Adamson’s best movies, I think.

Black Heat

 

Route Kicksty Kicks

Black Heat
aka The Murder Gang
USA 1976 Directed by Al Adamson
IIP/Severin Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Spoilers I guess... c’mon, it’s Adamson.

Okay, so the next title up for me to watch in Severin’s pretty thorough Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection is one of his attempts to ‘cut it’ in the popular Blaxploitation market, albeit it’s kinda late in the cycle. Black Heat gives us lead actor Timothy Brown as... drumroll please... Kicks Carter! There’s a character name for you. Along with his partner Tony, he makes up a two man army of streetwise cops as they keep their ear to the ground (okay, not literally) and get the ‘dope on the streets’ and, you know, all that stuff.

Now, this really isn’t one of Adamson’s best pictures by a long chalk (but hey it’s more watchable than movies like the truly diabolical Brain Of Blood, reviewed here and Nurses For Sale, reviewed here) and the plot on this one almost, but not quite, made sense.

So... bad guys make a deal to trade weapons in the desert (because, Al Adamson, of course he’s shooting in the desert as much as possible) for high grade drugs for the main bad guys that ‘bad guy number one’ is working for... namely psycho Ziggy played by Russ Tamblyn and his boss lady, who owns a nightclub. A nightclub where various ladies employed there have been connected to a series of crimes. With me so far? Okay, so the deal is set but Ziggy needs to blackmail Tony’s girlfriend Terry, played by Jana Bellan, to get them the movements of a security guy from the firm she’s working in, so they know when he’s carrying some money in a suitcase strapped to his wrist. This is after they get rid of suspicious cop Tony and our main man Kicks has to go it, more or less, alone... apart from some other guy who’s next to useless and his sexy news journalist lady Stephanie, played by Tanya Boyd, along for the ride.

Okay, after some shenanigans where it’s revealed that Kicks’ good guy informant, who has a lot more of a vibrant personality than him anyway, is supplying arms (keeping Kicks informed so he can nab them all in the desert) while the bad guys get the money by killing the security guy and cutting his hand off for the case. More shenanigans ensue and there’s a big showdown at the nightclub where Tamblyn gets killed... and then another showdown in the desert where Kicks’ informant gets blown away and the last of the villains takes off with the weapons in a private plane, only to be blown up when a rogue shot from Kicks starts a fire near all that ammunition... in a shot of ‘something’ exploding hastily cut in next to footage of the plane, which looks suspiciously like the same footage from The Fakers (reviewed here)... which I suspect was also tracked in footage back then.

What else? Well... Adamson turns up as a gambling customer in one scene. There’s nudity and rape and it’s mostly unpleasantly handled because... well... I think it’s supposed to be edgy. Actually, the scene where Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol as Valerie... a friend of Kicks, Tony, Terry and Stephanie... gets interrogated by Tamblyn and co with a brutal beating, has some good make-up so it actually does look like she’s having a rough time there. Carrol wasn’t such a bad actress and she comes through in scenes like this. That being said, Adamson’s also given her a long scene where she’s at a piano singing a song for the nightclub customers which... well, it’s not a great tune and it goes on for too long so, it does kind of stop any impetus the movie was trying to build on stone dead at that point. Also, I can’t work out what her character is doing in the movie in the first place. She seems to be way surplus to requirements and, the one time at the end when I thought the bad guys were going to use her as a hostage and thus give a dramatic purpose to her inclusion... they didn’t. In fact, all the way through the picture, the bad guys just seemed to be really stupid... not even realising the cops were onto them before they were already, more or less, knocking down their door.

And there’s not much that’s remarkable in this movie, to be fair. The action scenes are okayish but almost all of them take place in either the desert or on rooftops and, I’m only just realising that when his characters are in an urban environment in these kinds of movies, Adamson generally tends to shoot a chase or two on the rooftops because, well I suppose it’s easier to deal with no crowds and I suspect you can film these low key without paying any licenses. That’s just my best guess though.

Actually, there is one scene which stands out, not because it’s particularly well executed but because it has an unusual outcome. It’s when Kicks is trying to hostage negotiate a guy down from a building and into a getaway car without getting the woman that the guy's taken taken, who is wired up as a human bomb, blown up. Well, that’s a complete failure because, once the psycho packs his hostage into the car he gets in beside her ready to drive off, his wires have got caught in the car door and when he shuts it the car goes up with them in it anyway (I think this may be the sequence that Adamson recut into the end of Doctor Dracula, reviewed here). Which is kind of unusual but I think it matches the slightly bleak attitude Adamson gave to some of his projects.

And there’s not much more for me to say on this one. I didn’t mind it but Black Heat is probably the worst example of the genre I’ve seen (so far, I think he made some more of these kinds of movies) and it’s not something I’d recommend to anyone, to be honest. A bit lukewarm rather than the temperature expectations implied in its title, I would say.

Proud Mary

A Mary’d Woman

Proud Mary
2018 USA Directed by Babak Najafi
UK cinema release print.

Okay, so this film seems to have had no publicity to speak of... at least over here in the UK. In fact, the first I’d heard of it was when it showed up in the listings at my local cinema last week. A quick look at the trailer showed that it seemed to be going for a stylistic flashback to those great female-centric blaxploitation movies of the 1970s. You know... those really cool pics like Coffy, Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones. However, a hasty scan of the user reviews on the IMDB showed that this was not a well liked movie, for the most part. In the end I decided to throw caution to the wind and give this one a go anyway and, you know what? I’m glad I did because I’m here to tell you now that it’s actually a nice little shoot ‘em up movie.

The plot of Proud Mary is a very slight twist on an old storyline. It’s basically John Cassavete’s Gloria in sheeps clothing, so to speak. That doesn’t make it any less valid as being worth an hour and a half of your time, though and the plot goes something like this. Mary, played absolutely brilliantly by an actress I’m not all that familiar with called Taraji P. Henson, is a ‘hit-woman’ for an organised crime family run by Benny (as played by Danny Glover) and his son, her ex squeeze, Tommy (played by Billy Brown). After an opening credits sequence, which I’ll get to in a minute, she carries out a ‘contract’ on a small time bookmaker but, when she investigates who else is in the house after shooting him, she sees (without him knowing it), the bookie’s young son Danny (played extremely well by Jahi Di'Allo Winston). She doesn't kill kids so she leaves him be but keeps tabs on him and, one year later, finds he is enslaved, badly beaten and doing drug runs for an arm of the same organisation she works for. She ‘rescues him’, bumps off his abusers and takes Danny in, without letting on to her boss what’s going on. However, this incident, which she doesn’t own up to, is the touch paper for a gang territory war and it’s a film about the lengths Mary goes to keeping her and Danny safe from, mostly, her own people.

So yeah, a clichéd plot but it’s done with a certain sense of style and a lot of competent film making so I really can’t see why a lot of people didn’t click with this one. There’s plenty of action and a nice look to it which is consistent all the way through. The suspense level is high throughout... although that may be because I personally find gangster films very uncomfortable to watch and, unless they were shot in the 1930s, I try to avoid them whenever I can. I think that goes back to my grammar school education as a kid because, frankly, I found school to be a training ground for hoodlums, thugs and crooks and I find the people walking the planet in real life these days much more threatening than anything you’d find in a horror movie (which, ironically, I find much more comfortable to watch).

I think the problem on this one for a certain section of the audience may be the tone of the piece. The trailer definitely has an early 1970s blaxploitation vibe and, when you get to the film itself, it also pushes that comparison when it comes to the wonderful opening credits sequence. It’s a basic ‘hot lady gets tooled up for an assignment’ style scene but with blazing seventies typography and an opening needle dropped song that practically screams the style of those bold pictures in no uncertain terms. However, after the opening titles, that kind of vibe only comes back with a few, well placed songs and it’s pretty much absent for the rest of the movie. Fil Eisler’s score is actually pretty good but it never really tries to catch those kinds of tones and I suspect that kind of musical doorway into the past was not part of the scoring brief, so to speak. Unfortunately, the score is only available on download as a stand alone listen... not as a proper CD... so it’s not something I’m likely to get to appraise properly in the near future.

That being said, the film is, mostly, not trying to be a 1970s homage but, perhaps, it is trying to re-establish that ‘strong black female lead’ style film for a modern marketplace and I’m all for that. Henson absolutely kills it as Mary and she has the kind of on screen personality and star quality to make this movie shine. She’s not trying to be Pam Grier or Tamara Dobson or anyone else in that kind of genre canon... but she is quite naturally wearing the mantle of their cinematic legacy without even trying. The result is an anti-hero you can root for and a character you can really believe in. Her chemistry with the kid is especially engaging and neither her nor the young feller in question have any problems with getting into some seriously emotional scenes during the course of the movie.

The film does pretty much all you could ask for and it has some great stuff going on visually here too (well... okay... I would like to have seen a little more of the main lead in a more sexploitative way but... yeah... ignore I said that, it would be politically incorrect of me to highlight that element of its visual heritage, surely?). It is a little less realistic in its portrayal of the ‘mob style’ shenanigans, however, in that it seems to be taking place in some kind of Hollywood la-la-land where no matter how much noisy shooting and bodies a character leaves behind, there is never any police presence in the film whatsoever. I mean, although a lot of the kills in this film are shown with various gunmen using silencers, a fair proportion of them also aren’t but, strangely, you never once hear so much as a siren throughout the course of the movie. So... yeah, that was a little weird.

Ultimately though, Proud Mary isn’t trying to be a close match to reality and the film exists in that special place where so many action thrillers like to dwell. It’s no big deal and the film is way more entertaining than some of the IMDB reviewers seem to be saying. Definitely a good time at the cinema if you’ve got nothing else on this week and probably something which would do quite well on the Blu Ray and DVD market too. Check this one out because, although I didn’t understand the title and its relevance to the character, it’s a well made action thriller when so many these days aren’t quite up to scratch. 

Live And Let Die

Assault and Pepper

Live And Let Die
1973 UK
Directed by Guy Hamilton
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Okay. So let me just go on record here as saying that Roger Moore’s version of Bond in the seven films he made in the series is, along with Daniel Craig, one of my least favourite portrayals of Bond on film ever. He was just, for the most part, a much softer character than I want to see as Bond and that’s all there is to it. It’s not his fault because the character is still quite tough and raw here... I think it’s much more to do with the writing than anything else. By the time he did his third one, The Spy Who Loved Me, it was almost like the character had suffered a complete sea change since the days of Connery and Lazenby and, although there are still a few good things on show in the majority of his movies for EON... I don’t really expect to be giving many of his movies a good review here, truth be told.

That being said, Guy Hamilton’s Live And Let Die will always hold a little place of affection in my heart, and not just because it was the first Bond film I saw at the cinema, at the age of five (followed by a load of screenings of Connery double bills... see my first Bond review for Skyfall here for the full story). The fact is, Live And Let Die, while somewhat different in tone from the previous Bond movies, is actually a great little movie and definitely Moore’s best in the role. A curious mix of blaxploitation movie (which were hitting big at the time) and action-loaded stunt fest, Live And Let Die has a lot going for it.

It also carries on and tries to solve one of those great continuity errors arising from the choice of shooting the novels out of order (as I mentioned in my Dr. No review here). In fact, in that review I said...

“The character of Quarrel, the guide who takes Bond to Crab Quay, was already a recurring character in the books, having played a big part in an earlier book, Live And Let Die. Dr. No is Bond’s second encounter with the character and, in both the book and the film versions, he is burnt to death by the bad guys. However... this obviously left the filmmakers with a slight (it’s a question of taste and respect) problem when it came time to shoot Live And Let Die a decade later. How did they solve that little problem? Well, wait until I review Live And Let Die and I’ll tell you.”

So yeah. This is where I tell you, I guess. In the movie version of Live And Let Die, which obviously in movieland takes place after the events of Dr. No (but way before in the chronology of the books), Bond enlists the aid of Quarrel Jr, the son of the character he encounters in the first movie... although the age difference between father and son and the timeline of the movies makes absolutely no sense. Of course, the bond movies exist in a very surreal timeline and none of the continuity between films makes a heck of a lot of sense anyway, to be honest... Skyfall being one of the worst offenders for that sort of thing in years.

In fact, the film has quite a few quirky facts and figures going for it. A few of those many curios I’ll list here.

Firstly, Live And Let Die features the comical (to the point of irritating, but not when you are a five year old as I was the first time I saw it) antics of Clifton James as the “much imitated in popular culture” Sheriff Pepper... a character who proved to be so popular that he was brought back for the next film in the series, The Man With The Golden Gun.

It also stars David Hedison (who was billed as Al Hedison back when he played the title character in the original version of The Fly) as Felix Leiter. He would go on to reprise the role years later opposite Timothy Dalton’s excellent Bond portrayal in the not-so-great movie License To Kill (a complete failure of a movie and a bit of a franchise killer... or so I’d assumed at the time). Now Hedison was the only actor to play Felix Leiter twice... up until decades later when Jeffrey Wright would also play the character twice opposite Daniel Craig in both Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace. 

More interestingly, though, in terms of both the Felix Leiter character in the books and Hedison’s portrayal of him, is that lots of the source novel for Live And Let Die was not used for the movie version. However, two of the scenes from the book were taken pretty much in tact in terms of emotional intent for two later movies in the series... the boat drag sequence in For Your Eyes Only and also the Felix Leiter “he disagreed with something that ate him” sequence in License To Kill. In the novel of Live And Let Die, Felix Leiter is half eaten by sharks and left for dead... and it was only the second book in the series, following on from Casino Royale! However, the character then starts appearing regularly in the books, with a hook for an arm and fake leg etc. This is the version of Felix, ex-CIA due to his grizzly experience and now working for Pinkertons, who is the regularly appearing character... not the version often portrayed in the movies. It’s therefore quite proper that Hedison, who is great in the role anyway, was called back in to play Felix in another sequence inspired from the original novel’s source for the first movie he played the role in. One of those pleasing bits of serendipitous film history moments which bring a smile with them.

Another interesting bit of casting for the film is the lovely Jane Seymour who plays the fortune teller Solitaire, in the employ of Yaphet Koto’s lead villain. This part had already been signed to actress Gayle Hunnicut, who had to bail on the job due to pregnancy. Something quite bad about this character, however, is that she uses a deck of tarot cards adorned with a snazzy design based on the numbers “007”. What the “bloopity bloop” is that all about? Seriously?

This is also the first film in the sequence not to feature Q. This character had been in it since his first appearance under the character’s actual name, Major Boothroyd, in the first EON production, Dr. No. When the character reappeared in the next film in the sequence, From Russia With Love, Desmond Llewellyn took up the reins and played him in pretty much every film until his death... excluding this one. He would have to wait until the next movie in the series before he could start to develop some on-screen chemistry with Moore’s Bond.

Another first is it’s the first in the sequence not to have ay music composed or arranged by John Barry in it. “Fifth Beatle” George Martin toook on scoring duties on this one (maybe a natural choice after Paul McCartney wrote such a blistering, cool opening title song) and it’s certainly one of the better non-Barry scores in the series.

And that’s about it for this one. Live And Let Die is a fiercely enjoyable action romp... but with not too much of a cold war/spy feel to it. It’s always a laugh and a pleasure to watch and, if you can divorce Roger Moore in your mind from the character he’s supposed to be playing, then his performance is also very watchable. Easily my favourite of the Moore Bonds but I should probably warn you now though that, if you’ve been reading my Bond reviews in chronological order, you may find they get quite a lot shorter and more cursory through the tenure of the Moore films as I just don’t rate them all that much against most of the other movies in the series. If you want to see an entertaining Bond movie with Roger Moore in it, however... pick this one.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Three The Hard Way

Hard Three Way


Three The Hard Way US 1974
Directed by Gordon Parks Jr.
Warner Brothers Region 1

Right, this is a film I’ve been meaning to see for a long time now because it’s got three classic heroes of 70s blaxploitation cinema all in one film... Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and the incomparable Jim Kelly. They are the Three... who are having to do things... The Hard Way... apparently.

Okay, so this one’s directed by Gordon Parks Jr, who also directed Superfly which, apart from the awesome score on it, I didn’t really dig all that much when I saw it. This movie is much more palatable to my visual taste buds but the score on this one by Richard Tufo, while still okay, is not a patch on Curtis Mayfield’s epic for the former movie. But it is still quite funky (when nobody actually sings over it) and it doesn’t really matter all that much because this one’s got...

Brown! Williamson! Kelly! Doing things the hard way. The three of them together. Doing things the hard way. Watch them doing it hard! All three of them. In... Three, The Hard Way!

Um... sorry, don’t know what came over me there.

Alright... the plot on this one is unbelievably non-politically correct. I’m almost afraid to even mention it in this review because it’s just so racist and if anyone tried to make a film with this plot device in today's climate, they would be handed their backsides by the media and public alike. However, I’m reviewing the movie here so I’ll just go ahead and say it...

A sleazy group of neo-nazi white boys have been kidnapping and experimenting on black people in order to perfect a new toxic chemical which will only kill black people. Their plan is to dump it in the city water supplies in three test areas and start “cleansing the nation”... of black people.

Seriously, I’m not making it up. That’s the premise!

The opening, pre-credits sequence shows a friend of Jim Brown escaping from the villains’ compound and, after the credits have rolled to an interminably questionable choice of opening title song, the wounded guy hooks up with Mr. Brown and enlists his help. Pretty soon after though, the group of “good ol’ white boys” finish their ex-prisoner off with some bullets and kidnap Jim’s girlfriend from the hospital in the process. Not good.

Soon Jim Brown has enlisted his friends Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly to help him tackle the problem head on. This seems to involve the following process.

Jim goes to see Fred Williamson who has been showing his romantic prowess in a previous scene. Jim and Fred get chased by evil guys and shot at and everybody has a big fight in which the group of white guys all get soundly trounced. Then they go off to see if they can get ahold of Jim Kelly, who has been beating up the police who are trying to frame him, with his ultra-fine, slow-motion kung-fu techniques and impressive array of what can only be described as “kung fu whoops” coming from his mouth. The three of them all get attacked by the villains and kill them all apart from one guy they capture. After a few more shenanigans of this nature, the three separately go to the three cities targeted by the “bad guys” and each stop the toxin from getting dumped in their water supplies. They then regroup and “hit” the compound together to kill all the bad guys and rescue Jim Brown’s gal.

Now you might think from this description that this movie is immensely entertaining... and you’d be kinda right actually. It’s nowhere near as slick or as enjoyable as, say, the Shaft trilogy or the first Cleopatra Jones movie, but it has got a certain vibe to it and it’s also got a raw gutsiness that you wouldn’t necessarily expect in some of the more commercially “clean” product of this genre of movie. For instance, there’s a brilliant sequence where Fred Williamson calls in three dominatrix friends to find out what their captured bad guy knows. After a while they come out all topless and sweating and send Fred and Jim in to pick up the pieces. The guy is so terrified of what’s been happening to him, even though there seem to be no marks on his body even, that he tells all... then dies of fear before the ladies can continue their perspirational work. These are some mean mothers and not anything like the more common images of dommes associated with the BDSM scene these days (and perhaps is worth something from the point of view of a historical document to those interested in such things). Even though there’s a lot of humour in this sequence, it also has a very dark undertone and it lends this movie a certain credibility or edge which some other films in this sub-genre lack.

It’s also competently shot and, while some of the action sequences may seem a little less heart pumping to modern audiences, there’s certainly enough enthusiasm for the running/jumping/fighting by all concerned. And, to be honest, I always find it fun how some of these 70s action movies pan out. There seems to be some vehicles in this one, for example, that just wanted to explode for no other apparent reason than they hit a small bump in the road or went up a curb. I reckon 70s cars must have been built to spontaneously combust if Hollywood movies of the time are anything to go by. I’d be really cautious about driving one myself... it seems like all you have to do with these things is lean on the bonnet and you’d suddenly see your car and body engulfed in flame. Not a prospect I’d relish.

Three The Hard Way isn’t exactly a top notch action movie... but it does have a lot of heart beating within it to inject a little soul into the proceedings and, like I said before... a lot of enthusiasm. The plot is absolutely outrageous and the music varies wildly from cool n’ funky to downright corny as hell (usually when somebody starts singing) but ultimately, if you’re a fan of this genre, then this is one you should probably add to your “to watch” list if you haven’t seen it already.

See it because it’s Brown! See it because it’s Wiliamson. See it because it’s Kelly! See it because they are three friends with a mission... doing it the hard way. Three... The Hard Way!