THREE TOUGH GUYS is a film with varied influences. Made with French and Italian funding, shot in America by an Italian crew and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, it's a movie that attempts to cash-in on two big genres of the time: the blaxploitation film and the gangster epic. Thus we get a buddy-buddy cop story in which a hard-fighting priest and a tough black ex-cop team up to battle some gangster types searching for missing loot. The guy directing this is Duccio Tessari, a guy who pumped out a few peplum and spaghetti western flicks among others during a long and varied career.
Despite – or maybe because of – the diverse influences, this film actually works as a fairly good thriller. It hasn't got much in it that's not been seen elsewhere, but the story moves along quickly and the various shoot-outs and fist-fights are well handled. It also boasts some interesting leads. I don't know who Lino Ventura is, but his hard-bitten priest character is definitely tough. Isaac Hayes, playing opposite him, is a giant of a man with the softest of voices, and contributes some decent music to the proceedings. The third of the tough guys is Fred Williamson, appearing as a little-seen villain in this. It's unusual seeing Williamson cast as a bad guy and I wish he'd been on screen more, but there's no knocking his presence. Character actors familiar from Italian cinema pop up, like William Berger and Jess Hahn.
There are a few car chases thrown in for good measure, along with some antagonistic cops and a fantastic interlude in which one of our heroes is very nearly fed into a furnace. The set-piece finale takes place at a run-down bowling alley, but not before plenty of people have been shot or beaten up. It may not win any awards for wit or originality, but THREE TOUGH GUYS is a perfectly serviceable entry in both the blaxploitation and crime genres.
