Review of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) by Walter C — 19 Nov 2009

While Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) is being taken to the police station for questioning, the cops pick up another black man and start beating on him. Sweetback comes to the rescue and kills the cop and spends the rest of the movie on the run.

This is considered the first blaxploitation film (coming out before 'Shaft' by a few months) and was made with a very limited budget. The first half of the movie is okay with Sweetback trying to find a safe haven within the black community that he has become a legend within. After the first forty minutes it's basically scene after scene of Sweetback running through the city and the desert as if they had run out of script or didn't have much of a script to work with in the first place.

Mario Van Peeples made a great movie about the making of this one called 'Badass.' I'd say watch that movie with this one. This one on it's own without the history behind it isn't that great of a movie.