Writing/directing cult figure Larry Cohen brings high-concept and low-aim to this crudely entertaining/crudely effective Blaxploitation gangster pic on the rise and fall of Fred Williamson’s Harlem-based crime boss, an impatient striver who expands his biz not wisely, but too well. Offering himself as thuggish rep for the Italian gang who’ve long run the territory (bona fides established by ‘taking out’ a competitor), Williamson soon grabs the reins ‘Little Caesar’ style with a network of enforcers while plundering a sexy babe as if she were an adjacent city block he needed to annex. His downfall proper begins when her affections shift to his BFF, a nerdy accountant Williamson has protected from bullies since juvenile delinquent days. But if he is going down, Williamson’s taking as many along for the ride as possible. Cohen gets by in the juvie prologue and in the first act with ‘70s style (swag, strut, James Brown soundtrack), but loses grip about the same time things turn against Williamson, Inc. His technical deficiencies crashing into his ambitions. And not only as director, his writing equally shallow. In a score of pics over the next 25 years, he never got much better. I suppose it makes the films all-of-a-piece . . . just not in a good way. Still, this one is watchable and a sweet period time-capsule. Hard to beat those straight up tracking shots of a dressed-to-impress Williamson walking past retail storefronts on 125th in Harlem.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: A quickly made sequel, HELL IN HARLEM/’73 (not seen here), ignored inconvenient plot elements and was poorly received. Instead, a fact-inspired A-list version, AMERICAN GANGSTER/’07 (Denzel Washington; Ridley Scott). https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/in-spite-of-technical-facility-ridley.html
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