Gordon Parks Jr.

  • Three the Hard Way (1974)

    Three the Hard Way (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) When people praise the fun of blaxploitation, they often talk about Shaft, but I think they really mean films like Three the Hard Way. I suppose there’s some irony in that Shaft, from Gordon Parks père, is a studied, rather serious cool, while Three the Hard Way, from Gordon Parks fils, truly plays into the exploitation elements. Macho male leads, sexy actresses (go ahead and try to pick between Sheila Frazier and Marie O’Henry), Kung fu fighting (making explicit the connection between two strains of exploitation films), more action sequences than was the norm in the mid-1970s, some delicious urban style and an elaborately ludicrous premise. We’re way beyond the usual inner-city crime thrills here: This is a film about defeating a white supremacist plot to kill non-white Americans through a genetically engineered virus. Fortunately, Three the Hard Way goes about it in such an over-the-top way that it’s much easier to cheer for the systematic slaughter of dozens of white racists than to be too upset about the idea. Led by Jim Brown and supported by Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly, the cast is not just about preventing genocide, but looking terrific while doing it. Martial arts moves are supplemented by an arsenal so large that it takes a plane to carry it all. The action scenes, explosions and fights are numerous, although Parks’ low-budget, early-days-of-the-action-genre direction has more old-school charm than real immersion: it’s all too easy to spot where cuts are meant to masquerade bad staging… and even easier to spot where the staging doesn’t work even with careful cutting. (There’s a jeep explosion filmed from two angles that’s supposed to be two separate explosions, for instance…)  But this is not a film made for technical prowess: it’s a slam-bang exploitation film done with generous means for the subgenre and an accordingly larger scope. The three leads are quite likable, leading to considerable sympathy for them as they mow down scores of unrepentant white supremacists. But it’s really the period feel of mid-1970s black Los Angeles that makes the film work: the style, fashion, and attitudes are something that has been parodied often (Undercover Brother owes a deep debt to Three the Hard Way) and integrated into an entire aesthetics, but it’s great good fun to get back to the source of it all. The copious amount of sex and violence means that it’s not a film for all audiences, but blaxploitation fans will recognize the pure undiluted thing here.

  • Super Fly (1972)

    Super Fly (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) From the peak of blaxploitation comes Super Fly, a stylish crime story that’s arguably more interesting in-context than by itself. The story of an anti-hero drug dealer trying to go straight but being discouraged from doing so by nearly everyone he meets, Super Fly emerged in the blaxploitation wave launched by Shaft and others, and represented in many ways a near-repudiation of the Production Code’s crime-never-pays credo. At a time when black economic disadvantages were increasingly noted by scholars and pundits, Super Fly offered an alternative portrait of a self-made man, flouting conventions and morals by selling drugs… and becoming rich and powerful along the way. While audiences flocked to this portrayal of sticking it to The Man, not everyone reacted as favourably—blaxploitation was getting popular enough to bother some white audiences and to infuriate black community leaders trying to promote more traditional values. It’s also essential to point out just how much of the film was borne out of black filmmakers—written by Phillip Fenty, directed by Gordon Parks Jr. (not Shaft’s director: his son) and originally financed by black investors before being sold to Warner Brothers. At the same time, Super Fly made headlines thanks to Curtis Mayfield’s top-notch soundtrack—one which still exemplifies much of the sound of blaxploitation. Compared to those contextual elements, Super Fly-the-film seems primitive. It’s useless to belabour the point that criminal anti-heroes have become cinematic staples (especially in the black cinema of the 1990s that was, in many ways, the inheritor to the blaxploitation movement) and that the shock value of its murderous protagonist is no longer what it was. Still, the period atmosphere is exceptional (showcasing the urban malaise that gripped New York at the beginning of the 1970s, now thankfully a thing of the past) and the film has flourishes of style, such as a striking heist sequence told in still pictures. Super Fly may not be as purely entertaining as late-period blaxploitation, but it’s watchable enough, and culturally important as well.