In short: Friday Foster (1975)

Photographer Friday Foster (Pam Grier) stumbles into the job of shooting the secret return of The Richest Black Man In The World™, Blake Tarr (Thalmus Rasulala), to his native USA, but instead witnesses and photographs a murder attempt on him. She manages to take a picture of the only of the would-be assassins (Carl Weathers) who escapes the combined firepower of Tarr's bodyguards and the police. Friday'd love to follow up on the story, but her boss Monk Riley (Julius Harris) does disapprove of his people involving themselves in things. Which does awaken a few doubts in me regarding the noteworthiness of his magazine.

The escaped killer also just happens to be involved with Friday's close friend Cloris (Rosalind Miles), whom he kills at a fashion show of eccentric designer Madame Rena (professional eccentric Eartha Kitt). If her boss wants it or not, Friday is going to investigate this killing for sure, even if her private eye friend Colt Hawkins (Yaphet Kotto) is the only help she can get.

Little does our heroine expect that she'll uncover (without doing much actual investigating) a particularly absurd conspiracy by The Man to keep African-Americans down.

It is true, Arthur Marks's Friday Foster, an adaptation of the first US newspaper strip featuring a black woman as its main and titular protagonist, is one of the minor efforts among AIP's blaxploitation films starring house (and every sane person's, too) favourite Pam Grier. The film's plot is paper thin even for an exploitation film, the conspiracy our heroine uncovers without actually having to do much work for it (champagne soaked evenings with middle-aged black men don't count as work, I think), nor having to do much thinking for that matter, is just plain stupid, and if you've come either for complex political subtext or classic blaxploitation outrageousness, you've come to the wrong film.

However, there's something political in, and something to be said for, the film's willingness to be lightweight, its lack of the cynicism that runs through a lot of blaxploitation films. I'm not saying this cynicism was wrong or untruthful when it comes to talking about the actual political situation of black America in the 1970s, I'm just saying that from time to time, it's good to see a movie in the genre where political cooperation between different groups and unity instead of breaking into micro-factions are treated as a good thing that might even help produce change in the larger world. Of course, being the deeply silly film it is, Friday Foster makes this argument (I'm using the term loosely) by way of a preposterous gun battle but then I didn't exactly expect a debate.

Apart from that, Friday Foster is a diverting action comedy, with pretty much every character actor you'd look for in a blaxploitation movie expect Ossie Davis in one silly role or the other, and a main cast that hits the lightness appropriate for a film that sees its heroine steal a hearse and later the truck of a milk salesman. Everybody on screen is clearly in on the fact that they're in something rather fluffy, yet everyone seems to have fun with the film's inherent silliness, as did I.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,blaxploitation,comedy,arthur marks,pam grier,yaphet kotto

Blue Collar (1978)

Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel) and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto) work in a Detroit car factory. Despite their racial mix, they're drinking buddies, sharing their frustrations with the petty indignities of their bosses, the indifference of their union, their increasingly painful economic situation, and a complete inability to be honest to their families about anything (it's the old "a man's gotta provide for their family, but sure as shit ain't gonna talk to them" song).

One day, when money's getting even tighter for various reason, most of which are quite out of their control, the trio decide to rob the safe of their local union. The three men's amateurish robbery is successful in a way, but the loot's only six-hundred dollars and some paperwork, far below what the thieves were expecting. In the following days, the union claims to have been robbed of around 20.000 dollars.

On closer look, one of the notebooks among the papers the trio robbed has rather interesting contents. Looks like the union is loaning out large amounts of money for illegally high interest rates to very dubious people in places like Vegas and New York. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make a blackmail attempt? Turns out it truly isn't, and soon enough, Zeke, Jerry and Smokey are in even more above their heads than before, and a matter of casual crime turns into a matter of life and death that will - at best - break open all the rifts between the men, and might just possibly kill someone.

Paul Schrader's directorial debut Blue Collar is a strangely under-watched and underappreciated movie, despite Schrader's clout as a writer (at the point Blue Collar was made, Schrader had already scripted Taxi Driver and Obsession), the great central cast, and the fact the movie's pretty damn great.

At least it is if you have interest and patience to sit through the loose yet detailed way Schrader begins to explore his characters' lives and world. At first, I actually thought the patient and slow way in which Schrader introduces the audience to the facts of his characters' lives were a mistake, or rather, an exercise in a kind of flabby self-indulgence not atypical of parts of 70s cinema. As a matter of fact, I was wrong about that: every scene that seems aimless is actually important to characters, mood, and sense of place of the film; the seeming lack of direction mirrors the lost and directionless inner lives of the characters.

In this context, it is not much of surprise Blue Collar becomes increasingly tight once the characters are caught up in the consequences of their little robbery, and all even imaginary opportunities disappear for them. It's at that point all humour - before an important part of the film's tone - disappears from Blue Collar, the tone becoming grim, even nightmarish. Once the working classes are not playing the game they're supposed to play anymore, playtime is over for them until they're submitting to the system they're caught up in again, or are left by the wayside completely.

Schrader's rather daring approach to plotting his movie about the betrayal and self-betrayal of the US working class would probably not pay off as well as it does if not for his eye for telling details that not just make the characters believable as part of their time and place but also prevents the preachiness inherent in the material from taking over by showing flawed, sometimes stupid, men and not martyrs to a cause. As films interested in truthfulness go, it's really rather brilliant.

And that's before you even take the core trio of actors into account. I am particularly excited about Pryor's nuanced performance of the film's most complicated character. Pryor uses some of the usual mannerisms and bounds of his comedic characters as something Zeke wears like an armour, with the truth about who he is shining through in small, subtly played moments suggesting a fragility as well as an astonishingly large ability to lie to himself. After this, I'll have to take Pryor seriously as a serious actor. The quality of Kotto's and Keitel's performances is of course self-evident and utterly unsurprising.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,crime,paul schrader,richard pryor,harvey keitel,yaphet kotto