Bucktown - **1/2
Now Playing: (1975, Arthur Marks) [seen on DVD]
Given my disdain for many revenge films, I wasn't expecting to like this one very much, and for the first half hour or so, my fears seemed warranted. At the beginning of the film, Duke (Fred "The Hammer" Williamson) arrives in the title town to bury his brother and stays on so he can sell his brother's old club, but when the corrupt white police start harrassing him, he calls in some old friends to right the wrong against him and the town's mostly black populace. So far so routine, but when it begins to get interesting is when Duke's friends take over the newly-vacated positions on the police force, only to be corrupted by the positions as well. As an illustration of the old adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely," it's not subtle, but nobody went to exploitation films for subtlety, and to find a twist on the black-vs.-white dichotomy usually found in blaxploitation was surprise enough for me. The film is also fascinating as a product of the mid-70s, with Duke a far cry from the less threatening Sidney Poitier types that dominated American cinema only a decade prior- Duke rose up from a life of crime, not from a rich studio exec's dream of a good "colored" man. The film's final fight scene, in which Duke takes on his former-friend-turned-corrupt-police-chief Roy (those names can't be coincidental) is raw, brutal, and seemingly unchoreographed, as befits a brawl that's essentially a grudge match. It might not be pretty- Maltin calls it "repellent"- but it beats the tar out of today's whitewashed and simplistic revenge flicks (KILL BILL aside, natch).