Larry Cohen's use of Yaphet Kotto in Bone was enough to encourage AIP to approach him to make a blaxploitation gangster film. He responded by doing a black version of old Warner Bros gangster films - and very good it is too.
All the tropes are there - scenes of the gangster as a young kid (a shoe shine boy who helps a gangster kill a rival - a solid opening), gangsters getting knocked off on his way to the top, flashy clothes, molls, the woman he marries and makes unhappy, a childhood friend, a neighbourhood priest, a disapproving mother, the wife has an affair with the childhood friend. There's even scenes were someone falls down stairs, and people get shot on sidewalks - you can imagine the whole thing being done with George Raft and Edward G Robinson.
Sure it had been done before but doing it with black actors does make it seem fresh. Fred Williamson is a decent (anti) hero - handsome, driven. He's not a top league star, but he's a good B picture star. A leading man.
Admittedly, once I found out the treatment had originally been
commissioned by Sammy Davis Jr I kept wishing that he'd played the role.
He was shorter, less good looking, more charismatic, more driven. Williamson's character's main obstacle is that he is black - which don't get me wrong is a problem (the scene where he gets a comeuppance on the corrupt police captain is brilliant), but Davis Jnr would have all this extra stuff: height, looks, no eye - not to mention all that extra energy.
The handling is a little flabby. I tend to find this a lot with Larry Cohen's films. He has a pleasing taste for documentary style realism - shooting on the streets of New York (lots of scenes where extras look at the camera) but this needed some of that old Warner Bros tightness - some bang-bang-editing. Some sequences drag. I feel Cohen the director didn't always serve Cohen the writer that well.
But it is a lively script and there are plenty of good moments.
No comments:
Post a Comment