BLACK GUNN

Regular readers of this blog (and I sincerely hope you're one of them), know of my fondness for the "blaxploitation" films of the 1970s. These vintage genre films (almost all of them crime/action thrillers) take me back to my high school years and I genuinely dig the action, clothes, cars and music that's found in these films. Tough guy heroes, beautiful women, vicious bad guys and lapels out to here. Gotta love 'em!  Guilty pleasure? You betcha but I'm not going to apologize to anyone for liking these films. 

Kudos to TCM which often runs "blaxploitation" films in their late Saturday night/early Sunday morning time slots dubbed "TCM Underground". That's where I recently caught BLACK GUNN (1972), a Jim Brown vehicle that I had never seen before. 

The film kicks off with an explosive blast, a heist at gunpoint by a group of masked robbers against the money room of a mob controlled gambling den. The crooks get and get away with cash and a set of ledgers that threaten to blow the lid off of organized crime in Los Angeles.

Turns out the robbers are the leaders of the Black Action Group (B.A.G.), a para-military group similar to the Black Panthers. B.A.G. is made up of Vietnam vets and ex-cons and the money is going to buy weapons for an armed uprising against The MAN. 

One of the members of the gang, Scott (Herbert Jefferson Jr.), deposits the ledgers in a safe inside of his brother's night club. His brother? Gunn (Jim Brown). When Scott is killed by the mob, Gunn seeks revenge by launching a one-man war against the gangsters. 

The gangsters are led by used car salesman Capelli (Martin Landau) who is aided by a couple of vicious thugs, Rico (William Campbell) and Ray Kriley (Bruce Glover, who always played great psychos). There's also the luscious, mob connected Toni (Luciana Paluzzi, one of the Bond girls in THUNDERBALL) and Gary (I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN) Conway as a crooked politician. 

BLACK GUNN is a fairly routine crime/action film but director Robert Hartford-Davis keeps things moving at a good clip and stages several effective action set pieces, including the climatic dockside gun battle/car chase which ends with lots of things blowing up real good. 

BLACK GUNN made for a pleasant diversion on a cold, rainy November afternoon. Definitely recommended to fans of "blaxploitation" films or for those curious about the genre.