Original Gangstas

Original Gangstas (1996)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: Larry Cohen

Starring: Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Ron O’Neal, Richard Roundtree

From: Orion

Here is a movie that I’ve known about since it originally came out in ’96 (I actually remember advertisements for it on TV) but I only got to see it on Sunday night during the long day of movie-watching I had. It sounded interesting (a bunch of old blaxploitation vets get together to kick ass again against some young punks) but while it is watchable, it’s not like a blaxploitation version of The Expendables. Now, THAT would have been great for the 90’s to see these old favorites and young guys like, say, Ice T., Wesley Snipes, or Mario Van Peebles kicking ass against each other or together. It just wasn’t meant to be, though, and that makes me sad.

But, as for this movie, it’s a low-budget affair and while I would say it’s not like the best movies from the “soul cinema” of the 70’s, it still manages to be entertaining. You can tell that Williamson was one of the guys who produced this as he was the focus throughout. He plays a former pro football player (of course, something he was in real life) who returns to his hometown of Gary, Indiana-a rather nasty place, at least from the times I’ve driven by it on the Interstate in the past-to tend to his father, who was shot by a young punk. It deals with a gang in his old neighborhood, and ironically he was one of the original founders of that gang, but in those days it didn’t involve shooting people. Some other people get involved, such as the Brown and Grier characters, as their son manages to get murdered by the gang too. They try to stop the gang from terrorizing the neighborhood but the politicians in the city act like politicians and despite the efforts of people such as the Reverend played by Paul Winfield, the trio have to resort to violence to get their message across…

It’s interesting that I mention The Expendables earlier, as with that movie, here you have some characters be the main focus and much less focus is on the other ass-kickers in the film. Meaning, the roles of O’Neal and Roundtree are rather small. That’s fine, I suppose, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing more from them. I mean, all of the veteran actors* were more interesting than the young punkhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs who played the young punks.

• Besides the people already mentioned, there are small roles from the likes of Charles Napier, Wings Hauser, and Robert Forster.

Along with the violence you get to see-which was fun to watch-there’s also drama involving people abandoning their city, said city falling into disrepair, and those sorts of themes. Dramatically, it was fine. It’s just that you can complain about the story at time. For example, the plan that Williamson comes up with to deal with the gang… it involves quite a bit of collateral damage. Good going there. Speaking of Fred, I’ve come to understand that he was friends with Larry Cohen (a famous helm of many B-movies) so that’s why he directed this, but they aren’t pals anymore and since then he’s badmouthed Cohen for the job he did here. You could argue either way of it’s warranted or not but that’s unfortunate to hear.

Anyhow, I say that if you make sure to keep your expectations in check, then you might end up enjoying this as a 100 minute time-waster, if not much else than that.

I’ll be back Friday night with something new.