Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Movie review - "Original Gangstas" (1996) ***

This blaxploitation throwback has a fine premise - a bunch of old blaxploitation stars (Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier) reunite to take on a gang that they helped set up which is causing grief in the town of Gary, Indiana.

The structure is solid - a kid is killed for hustling a gang at basketball (I loved the low stakes-ness of this) and an old man is wounded for helping the police, prompting the old man's son (Williamson) to return and team up with the parents of the dead kid (Grier, Brown) to get revenge.

There's some satisfactory scenes of middle aged men kicking young arse - this film is kind of aimed at the black Clint Eastwood crowd. The quality of the cast is high - it includes Ron O'Neal, Richard Roundtree, Robert Forster, Charles Napier and Wings Hauser.

The script deals with some important issues, there's complexity to the characters. I don't feel it's as good as the premise - you could get a sequel or two out of it - but I liked this a lot more than I thought it would.


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