Review of Three the Hard Way (1974) by Allan C — 06 Feb 2015
Directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. (Super Fly (1972)), and written by Eric Bercovici (Hell in the Pacific (1968) and The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972)), this is a hard nosed blaxploitation action film, which predated Friday Foster (1975) with getting as many of the biggest names in blaxploitation together all at once.
It doesn't all work, but the plot was copied by Undercover Brother and Black Dynamite. Set in Chicago, record producer Jimmy Lait (Jim Brown) and his girlfriend Wendy (Sheila Frazier), discover Jimmy's friend House (Junero Jennings) dying in the street.
It turns out House had been kidnapped and tortured by a gang of white supremacists planning a black genocide, led by the evil Monroe Feather (Jay Robinson). After House dies, Jimmy calls upon his friends Jagger Daniels (Fred Williamson) and Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly) to take down Monroe's gang.
However, it gets personal when Monroe has Wendy kidnapped, and it takes Jimmy, Jagger and Mister Keyes to New York to take on the white supremacists once and for all. It's incredibly dated, but there have been worse films made than this, and it does have some good action sequences throughout, but compared to other blaxploitation films throughout, they had all been done elsewhere, and sometimes done better.
But this struck a chord with moviegoes at the time, and it did well.
This review of Three the Hard Way (1974) was written by Allan C on 06 Feb 2015.
Three the Hard Way has generally received mixed reviews.
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