Bucktown

By Zentilack

Summary

Duke Johnson (Fred Williamson) is a big city man visiting the small city of Bucktown for his brother's funeral.  Though he has inherited his brother's bar, legal issues keep him from selling it for at least two months.  Deciding to run it himself in the meantime, Duke quickly learns that the city has problems with corruption.  But when Duke calls in some old friends to help clean things up, he finds that he has an even bigger problem on his hands.


What I Expected

I'll be frank and state up front that I haven't seen very many films of this sub-genre.  I'm aware of some of the sort of tropes and conventions that are common to blaxploitation, but I'm still something of a novice here.  As such, I expected a lot of blatant racism coming from the whites, a lot of smooth 70's tunes, some slick outfits, and a large helping of faux kung fu.  Nothing spectacular, just a decent action movie was all I was hoping for.

Special Notes

Being a blaxsploitation film, racism is going to play a significant role.  The term "nigger" and other racial epithets are used, primarily in the first half of the film.  There is also some nudity.

The Bad

Fred Williamson was one of the few things I knew about this film going in.  I really liked him back in my Vigilante review, and was looking forward to seeing some of his other work.  Well, here he just wasn't nearly as good as I hoped for.  It's not that he was bad, in fact I'd say he had a few glimmers of that intensity and charisma I saw before.  The problem was that I wanted to see more of those great moments, and his performance was just sort of...adequate.  I think this is probably not one of his better movies.

I also recognized the lovely Pam Grier (playing Aretha) in this film.  Another famous blaxploitation face, Grier is really little more than the love interest in Bucktown.  She has her saucy and outspoken moments, but, like Williamson, I'm pretty sure this is not one of her more impressive roles.

The white policemen of the city were racist stereotypes and are suitable antagonists.  I have a small problem with the Chief of police, though.  He's specifically shown as a very religious man who is also coldly racist.  As a religious man myself, I'm keenly aware that there were--and, sadly, still are--those who use the Bible (badly) to justify racism.  I don't have any problem showing the hypocrisy of those who use Christian faith to claim blacks are lesser people, because that's abhorrent.  What I wish they would have done here is have someone speak the truth of the matter in the movie, that all people are equal in the sight of God, to counteract the Chief.  As is, it looks like it's bashing religion through the Chief character (which may well have been the intention, I don't know).

While I expected some martial arts-like fighting, as it's something that's been present in the few blaxploitation films I've seen, it was sadly absent here.  Oh, there was fighting, but it was pretty much just street brawling.  I don't think it was really bad, just mediocre and a tad disappointing.  Also on the action front, there were some pretty basic effects used for gunshot wounds that didn't really look very good.

There was a scene near the end when Duke gets his hands on an M-16.  I was kind of excited, looking forward to seeing him put a few bursts into the bad guys.  But he never fired it.  I'm serious, I don't think I saw one bullet leave that rifle.  It was just sort of held threateningly.

Coke can is in better focus than her

The cinematography is a mixed bag.  I'll get more into the better shots later, but sometimes things seemed curiously out of focus.  This mostly happened around up close shots of side characters, though I remember one significant character that this happened to.  It might not have been that bad except the editor kept switching back and forth between characters, alternating between properly focused and unfocused.

Speaking of editing, there are a couple of strange choices made here.  Nobody actually gets their dialogue cut off (though one person came pretty close), but the acting and inflection on the dialogue doesn't always sound natural.

The Good

The story was not something I expected, but in a good way.  Early on the white lawmen of Bucktown are set up as the bad guys.  They were good antagonists, easy for the viewer to dislike and you cheer when they get what's coming to them.  But that's only half the movie.  Let me elaborate a bit.

/*Spoilers - When Duke finds out how bad the corrupt cops are in town, he calls home to bring in some hard hitting brothers to help him fight back.  Well, they come in and they do indeed take out the cops.  But then these same black men from the city see the little protection racket that the cops had going on and decide they are going to take over.  The friends that Duke had called in to help clean up the city become the corrupt system that they had destroyed.  I thought it was a great turn and it was, in my opinion, the thing that kept the movie from being generic and boring. - Spoilers*\

Weathers, 2nd from the left

When Duke's city friend shows up with three other men, I was surprised to see that one of them was Carl Weathers.  Yeah, the man who played Apollo Creed in Rocky was one of the tough guys!  Now, this was a year before Rocky came out, and he'd only been seen in two TV episodes before this (Good Times and Kung Fu), so nobody knew who he was at the time.  But for me, having seen him in his iconic role, this was something that made me sit up and point at the screen.  Granted, he didn't do all that much in the end, but still, Apollo Creed!

The music was pretty good in places, though I wouldn't call it great.  Some spots let it down, such as the tune playing when Duke and Aretha have some alone time.  Overall, the music was about what I expected (maybe a bit less).

While most of the cinematography was pretty basic, and even badly done in a few places, there were other moments when they got pretty creative.  One particular scene was where Duke was speaking to his old friend Roy (Thalmus Rasulala).  There is a mirror against the wall that they use to show one character's reflection as they converse.  It could have been done a bit better, but I've got to give them props for making the shot more interesting.

While we're on the point of Rasulala, I liked his character.  When he comes in you can see the friendship between Roy and Duke.  For me, this relationship was the high point of Williamson's acting.  They were natural together and played off one another rather well.  /*Spoilers - As their friendship sours, though, you can see that while neither one wants to oppose the other, they are starting to realize that their philosophies are incompatible.  Rasulala does an excellent job in making his character believable as both Duke's friend and enemy.  Given the situation, they are bound for conflict, whether they want it or not. - Spoilers*\

Overall

There were some really good elements in the story, but I think Bucktown came up a little short of it's potential.  With Fred Williamson and Pam Grier headlining, it really should have been a better movie.  It's certainly not bad, but I hesitate to call it anything more than average.  As someone who isn't well versed in blaxsploitation, I thought it was a decent enough film that is entertaining, but I suspect that there are other, better examples of the genre out there.  I think seeing one or two of those first, then coming back and giving Bucktown a chance would be a good way to go.

Bucktown is on Instant Netflix and can be found on DVD at Amazon for $25.  Frankly, I don't think it's worth a $25 purchase, but I would recommend a rental.