Always happy to show appreciation for another neglected, funky down-at-heel TV movie, and director Marvin Chomsky certainly delivers the gritty gangster goodies with his bluntly effective crime drama about the desperate acts of low level hoods in the grim, twilight hours before their inevitably darker dawn. Mighty Joe Don Baker walks tall in this undeservedly obscure groovy 1970s Noirish crime thriller as big, hard luck thug Mongo who returns to his unlovely hometown after a lengthy 5 years absence in order to put right some grievous wrongs in his own inimitable, twin-fisted style, a firm crack in the jaw expediting his business far more eloquently than the fancy-schmancy talk he never had any truck with.
After a suitably rain-lashed opening we are dropped into the seedy milieu of insalubrious dives and their equally ill natured inhabitants, with their bad deals, cheap suits, watered down whiskey, this deliciously downbeat film positively seethes with familial treachery and callous, underworld duplicity, this heady cinematic brew brought quickly to boiling point as the bodies start piling up like discarded cigarette butts at an overnight stakeout! 'Mongo's Back in Town' is a terse, sinewy tale of hard-nosed, double dealing hoods, strongly bolstered by an extraordinarily talented cast: Telly Savalas in on especially enigmatic form as battle-weary Lt. Peter Tolstad, and along with his youthful, mustard keen partner Gordon (Martin Sheen) these tough, straight-shooting city cops are going hard and heavy on Mongo's case, but some of the bum clues just simply don't add up!
Stone-cold ape Mongo Nash doesn't care too much for social niceties, his dames come cheap, buck an' a quarter, worth less than a greasy plate of ham & eggs at Kossoff's dreary diner, and when the big guy's naive main squeeze Vikki (Sally Field) inevitably gets burned by the encroaching heat and wants to hit the bricks Lickety-split, her mean, brick house beau don't want it playin' out like that, now way over her innocent, pretty little head, she is forced to remain at his side until the excitingly mounted finale. Much like a man-sized shot of mescal this sordid backstreets affair got a dangerous sting in its tail. Rarely screened and no less infrequently championed, 'Mongo's Back in Town' is a grimy, dark edged TV movie of some considerable distinction.
