Mean Johnny Barrows

I got this film as part of this budget "Bad Brothas, Mean Mothas" boxed set, and watched this one first, because it stars Fred "Super-stud" Willaimson. I was surprised at what different and ambitous movie this is. Whether it lives up to all that ambition...

Rather than a typical revenge fantasy (nothing wrong with those, but...) this film follows Johnny B. as he tries to get a job and resist joining the mob after being dishonorably discharged from the army for striking a white officer (after being, to put it lightly, provoked).

It takes a while as the film unfolds to realize that he's not, as usually happens in these movies, going to get p***ed and get even. He is arrested and tormented by the police to which he won't even give his name or say anything. For a while I thought he was dazed by being beaten earlier, but by the time he gets to the police station he should be more coherent. Then I thought "Well, he's just so COOL that he won't even dignify those cops by talking to them," but then that falls apart as well and... I just don't know why he wouldn't talk. Because it's a plot point, I suspect.

The main idea of the story is Johnny trying to get a real job, and resist the mobsters who are offering him big money to become a hit man.

(SPOILERS AHEAD----->)The arc of the movie hinges on Johnny's love for a woman (a WHITE woman, no less), which we are supposed to understand leads to him finally agreeing to work for the mob in order to avenge her rape. Sadly, this entire aspect of the film just doesn't come off at all, as there is barely any connection between him and the woman, there is no discernible chemistry between them... there's just nothing.

(more spoilers here:) Another interesting thing about the structure of the film is how Johnny ends up the head of this crime organization at the end. It's just kind of interesting and unexpected. Then he offers his love to the woman, and instead of saying "Yes Johnny, take me anywhere and make love to me all day and all night! Do it right here! Do it right now!" like any sane woman or man would do, she... has a different reaction. And this leads to another surprising thing: the ending, which I totally didn't expect, but won't give away.

This movie being directed by Fred himself adds a dimension to all the adoring shots of himself glaring face-on into the camera, but hey, he looks great and he knows it. I also like the change when he finally gets into those slick suits. The cheap DVD I got REALLY suffers from not being widescreen, as Fred seems to like to place his characters on opposite ends of the screen, and it seemed like more than half of the movie featured half a person's face or shuttled back and forth between the ends of the screen.

A lot of people posting here have talked about how slow this movie is... I think because they're expecting a traditional revenge tale. This movie is not the greatest, but I think it deserves to be admired for the unconventionality of the story, and the aspects of 70s black culture (namely trying to get a decent job without any credentials, the difficulty of avoiding drawn into crime, in addition to the hammered in "plight of the veteran" aspects) that you don't see covered in other movies, which I think makes it kind of a little gem.

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I just want to say that this is a lot better than the last film I watched with Fred Williamson (Adios Amigo). But Mean Johnny Barrows is a crime film that has an interesting story, but is poorly executed across the big screen due to lousy direction from star Fred Williamson. In this snoozefest he is kicked out of the army for striking an officer. He then has a streak of bad luck starting with a beat down by the police. Then our hero is a hobo, homeless in extreme poverty. He then moves on up by scrubbing toilets in a gas station before taking a job as mob hitman. What else happens is hazy in memory due to struggling to stay awake in this poorly put together snoozefest. As a Fred Williamson fan, Mean Johnny Barrows is a let down and a bummer. Even though some of his films are of shoddy quality, Fred Williamson is a really cool and bad ass dude. His finer qualities don't save this stinker and I would advise interested parties to skip this one.

**SPOILER ALERT** Drummed out of the US Army for slugging his CO Capt. O'Malley, Aaron Banks, Johnny Barrows, Fred Williamson, drifts into town looking for a job ending up instead beaten and robbed by a couple of homeboys as soon as he leaves the bus.

Picked up by the cops thinking that he's a homeless drunk, homeless yes drunk no, Johnny gets worked over again at the jail house until the precinct captain who recognized Johnny as a star high school and collage football player, and decorated Vietnam War Vet, intervenes. At first Johnny is nothing but a shell of his former self going around town looking for a job as well as a free meal. While on skid row Johnny runs into Elliott Gould playing the part of a hobo wise-man who's name, Prof.Theodore Rasputin Waterhouse, is longer then the part that he has in the movie. We see Theodore teach Johnny the fine points of living and surviving on the streets by getting a unsuspecting soul, at a hot-dog stand, to share his frankfurter with him and Johnny.

Johnny had earlier gotten to know Mafiso bigwig Mario Racconi, Stuart Whitman, when he tried to get a free meal of spaghetti and meatballs at his restaurant which Mario overruled his angry chef, Jan J. Madrid, and gave him. Johnny also met Mario's girlfriend Nancy, Jenny Sherman, who took a strange liking to the wandering and homeless vet. It's when Mario offered Johnny a job as a hit-man for his organization he respectfully turned it down having done enough hit's in Nam then he would like to remember.

Still out to make an honest living Johnny ends up cleaning bathrooms and mopping floors at Richard's, R.G Armstrong, gas station but the cheap and ungrateful Richard, after Johnny broke his back working for him, gives Johnny a measly 21 dollars that comes out to something like .70 a day, for the month that he was employed by him. This leads Johnny to lose his cool and Richard to lose a couple of his teeth. Ending up again at the jail-house Johnny is set free with the help of the Racconi mob who got the now scared to death Richard to drop all charges against Johnny.

Mario together with his father Mafia Don Racconi, Luther Adler,had been gunned down by the rival De Vince Mob at a meeting of the minds between the two gang leaders about the trafficking of deadly and illegal drugs on the streets of L.A which Don Racconi was deathly against. With Mario surviving the shoot-out, his father Don Racconi didn't, he gets Johnny to agree to hit the De Vincie mob as a favor to him and Nancy whom Johnny has since fallen in love with.

Knocking off the entire De Vince Mob that included Don De Vince, Anthony Caruso, and his young and schmucky son Tony, Roddy McDowall, Johnny didn't realize that Tony was actually Nancy's man! Tony was planning with Nancy to get his father's and the Racconi Mob to kill each other off and then take take off with Nancy and both mob's assets to Mexico.

During the final stages of warfare with the De Vince mob Johnny come to battle it out again with the former Capt. O'Malley Johnny's old Army CO, who got him canned out of the service, who's now a martial arts hit man for the De Vincie's. O'Malley was no pushover using karate and judo tactics on Johnny but in the end Johnny get's the upper hand by returning a deadly flying star back to O'Malley throat.

The ending of "Mean Johnny Barrows" was a bit confusing not that Johnny was doubled-crossed by Nancy, whom we already knew was two-timing him, but the way Nancy was finished off seemed a bit out of place; stepping on a land mine in lovely and crime-free Malibu?

I wish someone would put Fred's directorial debut out in a decent widescreen DVD. The pan and scan versions out there now are so tightly cropped that they add a quality of hilarity even when the film is actually hitting some pretty serious notes (the pan and scan job is so bad it is almost like some kind of Austin Powers gag). But that said, I'm sure that much of the film would still be hilariously inept in any aspect ratio. In fact, the climax features THE most unintentionally comical Kung Fu fight ever put to film. I mean how often have you seen an actor start a butt-kicking by suddenly making snake moves with his hands and going "ASsssssssssshhhhhhhhsh sh sh sh"?

But there are some very effective moments as well, especially a brief cameo from Elliot Gould, who must have hit upon VERY hard times in the five years between MASH and this. And the sequence in which Johhny lets loose his anger by blasting and summarily cremating a mob boss almost seems like it's from another, much better, movie.

Anyway, it's a crazy hodgepodge, but I'd still like to see it in the original widescreen. Fred rules!

OK. Just had to put in a comment that those who speak English would fully understand. I don't know about you, but I don't know what "one mean of a dull movie" means. It's a shame when people don't bother to use the language correctly- the other reviewer seems fairly smart in other ways.

This is a dull movie, I grant you. I have it as part of a 4-DVD set called, "Mean Muthas & Bad Brothas." Or maybe it's the other way around. I'm not sure - I bought the set of four movies for 4.98. And it was well worth that. The cheapest I've ever seen of a notoriously cheap genre, this film is slow, barely coherent and full of things that don't make sense. On the other hand,it has Fred Williamson (and was apparently directed by him), Roddy McDowall (playing a Fredo-type, actually a pretty out-of-body performance, it was surprising to realize it was him, although I was looking for him) and Elliot Gould in a very strange but brief "special appearance" as a homeless yet extremely dapper fellow. Hey whatever - it's an incredibly bad blaxploitation film. If that sounds funny to you and you don't spend much money, go for it.