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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Rod
Barnett |
Isaac
Hayes is Mack "Truck" Turner, a former
college football star who with his partner Jerry
(Alan Weeks) now makes a living as a skip tracer
for bail bondsmen. The pair accepts a big payday
for bringing in a vicious pimp named Gator (Paul
Harris) but catching him turns out to be very
tough, and the pimp ends up dead. Gator's business
partner Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols) is enraged
at the death of her man and offers her stable
of high-priced hookers to the Mack Daddy who kills
Truck. After a few try but fail to take down the
formidable Mr. Turner, well-to-do pimp Harvard
Blue (Live and
Let Die's Yaphet Kotto) strikes a deal for
control of the call girls and hires professional
assassins for the job. But when the killers hit
the wrong man, Truck goes on the offensive to
keep the people he cares for safe and his own
ass out of the grave.
This is a great little movie that stands
tall next to more famous blaxploitation flicks.
Fast, funny and exciting, Truck
Turner is an unpretentious action movie
uninterested in social statements or damning The
Man... It simply tells a straightforward story
quite well. In doesn't break any new ground but
is instead an example of how to do the genre right.
It helps considerably that the excellent cast
knows how to play the material for maximum effect.
The weakest actor is Hayes but he's far from bad
in the central role, even if he gets by more on
his cool charisma than his thespian skills. He's
never less than convincing whether he's smacking
around a rapist or sweet-talking his petty thief
girlfriend — it's a good thing the script doesn't
call for more than he can give.
Luckily the legendary Kotto and a dream
list of character actors of the time support Hayes
nicely. Dick Miller plays the bail bondsman that
hires Truck to bring in Gator; Scatman Crothers
is a retired pimp who supplies information; Charles
Cyphers plays a drunk in one scene, etc. But the
real revelation for me was the spectacle of a
foul-mouthed, jive talkin', tight-satin-pants-wearing
Lt. Uhura! Yes, Nichelle Nichols sheds every ounce
of Star Trek reserve and Shatners her bad
self across the screen spitting fire at everyone
in sight. She's a joy to watch and her profane,
racial slur-slinging performance demonstrates
one of my favorite elements of the whole film:
its casually un-PC nature. I don't think there's
a single character here (black or white)
who doesn't use the dreaded "N" word
a least once — and often more than once per sentence.
Modern films only permit racial slurs to be used
by Nazis, gangsters or other designated bad guys,
so it's a shock to hear this stuff thrown around
so offhandedly. I'm sure it will cause some politically
correct viewers to have seizure-like fits but
I found it refreshing to see this often whitewashed
part of our culture presented in such a colorful
way... It's certainly an accurate reflection of
the 1970s. Maybe 30 years later Truck
Turner does have some social commentary
— if only accidentally.
Recently, interest in this film was generated
when Quentin Tarentino used a snippet of the score
in Kill Bill Vol. 1.
Isaac Hayes composed and performs the music and
it's one of his best works for film. It's a muscular,
funky set of songs with a big horn section and
plenty of wacca-chicca-wacca electric guitar
that's so cool it could make a corpse get out
on the dance floor. Hayes will always be remembered
for his Oscar winning Shaft
score but I like this one better and luckily it's
available on CD.
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Issued
as part of their Soul Cinema Collection,
MGM's DVD of this movie is good if typically spare.
The image is letterboxed at 1.85:1 and anamorphically
enhanced, with a picture that's a little grainy
at times. There are some occasional minor scratches
but nothing distracting. The sound is in what I
presume to be the original mono and is the only
real fault I can find with the presentation. Several
times throughout the movie the dialog becomes muffled
or in some cases mumbled and is very hard to make
out. I'm sure this is because of the original on-set
recording but it's an irritant only made worse by
the lack of an English subtitle track. There are
optional French and Spanish subtitles but I'm not
sure their translations of the movie's profanity
are always prefect (if you know what I mean).
The only extra is the great theatrical trailer
which is a classic in its own right. I would've
loved an interview with Mr. Hayes that centered
on this film but I'm not going to complain too loudly.
This is a great movie and I'm glad it's easily available
for such a low price.
4/07/05 |
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