Original Gangstas

It's like old home wee when stars like Jim Brown (Slaughter, Black Gunn), Fred Williamson (Starsky & Hutch), Pam Grier, Ron O'Neal (Superfly), Richard Roundtree (Shaft), and Paul Winfield (Sounder) get together to teach some young punks a lesson. Heavys of the 70's blaxploitation genre are called home to get some revenge and clean up the town. Lots of talking and shooting and good old fashioned fisticuffs.

Pam Grier (Coffy, Foxy Brown) is back in the form we like. She was one of the first female action stars in Hollywood. Looking forward to a retrospective this weekend when they replay two of her best.

This is something like a re-union party of the so-called blaxploitation film stars, which shows the whole world that those guys and ladies are still sexy and strong enough to teach some lessons to the young, disrespectful punks in the neighborhood of the city of Gary, Indiana. That's all about the story, which is as uninspired as any B-action flicks. "Original" gangstas come back to town, to fight against the "new" gangsters that rule the street with terror. The charm of the film lies in the cast, which looks a dream team for any fans of the 1970's blaxploitaion films. Here they are back in good form: Fred Williamson ("Black Caesar"), Jim Brown ("Slaughter"), Pam Grier ("Coffy"), Richard Roundtree ("Shaft") and Ron O'Neil ("Superfly") and you got also players like Robert Forster (who in the following year makes a smashing collaboration with Pam Grier in "Jackie Brown") and Wings Hauser in his very unlikely role. It is a gift from the heaven for the movie fans like me.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

Original Gangstas (1996)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Blaxploitation in the 90's has a street gang killing off people so the old guys (Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Ron O'Neal, Richard Roundtree) come to take the streets back. This all-star extravaganza remains a lot of fun like those films of the 1970's but this one here also has a message and asks a lot of serious questions. Whereas those 70's flicks simply blamed white folks, this one here goes a lot deeper in its message and even throws blame towards those earlier films. A lot of interesting ideas are brought up here, although we still get some mindless, if fun, action. Larry Cohen wrote a brilliant script and the performers all do a fine job. Robert Forster also stars.

This movie is correctly graded as a B picture. And yet it is more: an honest hommage to a real, existing town in the throes of death. Before I picked up Original Gangstas as a cheap video cassette, I did not know that the town of Gary existed. I didn't even know a town like Gary could exist (this proves once more: maybe we Europeans are kind of naive in the ways we evaluate the US's wealth and power and its effects.). Now I know better.

There is a certain similarity between this film and Jules Dassin's legendary documentary/crime movie The Naked City of 1948. Both use a style that wants to "tell a city". With the title credits the town is introduced to the viewers, with aereal footage, ordinary street scenes and a voice-over that tells something about the history of the town and a few selected buildings (the bakery, the cinema etc.). It is really educational. Very good location shooting gives a vivid impression of the specific urban wasteland. Gary becomes a real place. I also had the impression that the mood of the people who are forced or willing to live in present day Gary is accurately recorded: A mixture of anger, shame and - above all - fear. People are desperate, they don't see a future and the affiliation of youngsters to a gang appears for many to be the only way to survive.

In the story the main character played by Fred Williamson (also the producer and a Gary native who certainly put some very personal feelings into this movie) descends on the town as an aging "knight in shining armour". He assembles his old, middle aged buddies (plus Pam Grier!) and stages a war against the gangs. I did not care much for the story and its action scenes with unvariably high death tolls, but I must admit that this movie realistically highlights in a specific place a specific problem that is disquieting and difficult to solve.

It has always amazed me how the star of this film, Fred Williamson, has gone to such great lengths to badmouth this flick and the work of his former friend, writer-director Larry Cohen. I've read it and I've heard it on DVD audio commentaries--"Hiring Larry for Original Gangstas was a mistake," Williamson says. Yet he has nothing but praise for his own work as a writer-director.

Is the Hammer on crack, or what? This is a very slick, very cool little low budget action flick that shows the old time stars to great advantage. Cohen did a great job. In fact, if you took all the good parts from every movie that Fred Williamson produced and directed himself and put them together, the film you'd end up with would still be 1/100th the film this one is (of course a compilation of "good parts" from Hammer's self-directed flicks would only be 15 minutes long).

I love Fred Williamson. His pre-1976 movies like "Black Caesar" and "Bucktown" are classics, and I like him as a performer. I'd LOVE to see him work in more mainstream movies, as a lead. But the man has only been in three halfway decent films in the past quarter century: "Starsky and Hutch," "From Dusk Til Dawn," and "OG." And "OG" is the best of the three in my opinion. His self produced-directed efforts, his Italian-Euro cheapazoid flicks--they ALL rank as some of the absolute worst movies of all time.

So, don't listen to the star of the show, just watch the movie. "Original Gangstas" is a solid flick.