Foxy Brown (1974)

(On Cable TV, March 2021) For a screen legend such as Pam Grier, it’s surprising to realize that her famous early starring period was quite short — half-a-dozen films with American Pictures International from 1973 to 1975, after which the blaxploitation movement lost steam and so did her career. I’m sad to report that, in seeing Foxy Brown, I’m now left with one less of her films to discover. That sadness is somewhat offset by how, even though Foxy Brown is widely acknowledged as one of her better-known roles, it’s a bit of a step down from her slightly-more polished turn in Friday Foster. Here, she’s a grieving woman seeking revenge on drug dealers for shooting down her boyfriend. Her character also gets treated much rougher here than in other films: Disrobed, captured, drugged, raped and manipulated by the script in order to set up the revenge fantasy of the film’s final minutes, it’s far more clearly an exploitation film than Friday Foster was. Foxy Brown does represent that darker side of blaxploitation: while it features black characters proudly presenting themselves as part of black culture, it’s also rife in gory violence, sexual abuse and a lack of higher moral aspirations than revenge. The film can’t escape the gawking aspect of white filmmakers presenting black culture, and has aged a bit more poorly due to how Grier’s character is treated throughout. (Both Coffy and Friday Foster do better in that regard.)  Still, well, it is a film featuring Pam Grier from beginning to end, and she is, in the words of one character, “a whole lotta woman” — great period outfits, impeccable attitude and unarguable physical attributes make her a treat to watch (except when she’s being thrown in the deep end of the film’s exploitation pool of horrors). There are better Pam Grier films, but there aren’t a lot of them, so Foxy Brown still ends up as mandatory viewing for fans of the actress… even if they may regret it at times.