“Did you know a man’s beard keeps on growin’ even after he’s…
dead?” quips Tommy Gibbs before he
plugs his first man (in a barbershop, so you understand why he says it) on his path into, up through,
and up against the mafia in order to reign supreme.
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| Montages like this should be required of all mob movies. |
In an
era where all you had to do was add the adjective “Black” to the front of any
single word in order to create a movie, Black Caesar still oozes style and grit
even these nearly 40 years later. Former
all-pro defensive back-turned-actor Fred “The Hammer” Williamson plays an
ambitious kid from the streets of New York; looking to elevate his and his
family’s status above the white people they used to work for/be abused by.
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| What better way to stick it to the man than to pull a Blanket Jackson with fur coats? |
This
movie is not for the squeamish in terms of racial issues. There’s hardly a line in the whole script
that doesn’t couch one epithet or another.
If you can look past that, you have a very potent combination of
machismo that carries out throughout the whole film in a way that will put a
smile on your face: the early/mid 70s urban soul influence and the
quintessential mobster archetype.
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| We would pay these guys to make us pay them for protection. |
Williamson
spends a good deal of the movie chomping on a cigar, strutting down the streets
in a sharp suit and mean sideburns. His
patronizing air and put-on Italian mob accent when dealing with the Cardoza
Family is pretty hilarious. The only
time his character really goes off the rails as a tough-as-nails antihero
masculine role model is when he doesn’t let no mean no with his own fiancée. Not coincidentally, this is when things begin
to spiral out of control for the character of Gibbs. It is his hubris that leads to an epic and
bloody downfall, just like the makings of any classic Greek tragedy.
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| There must be an aftershave or deodorant commercial in here somewhere... |
You can’t
talk about this movie without talking about its music. The soundtrack is scored nearly completely by
one Mr. The Godfather of Soul, James Brown.
His impassioned singing (screaming) and his quintessentially tight band
elevate nearly every scene of the movie in a way that makes the Man Movie Guide
wish their life were accompanied by a soul band too. Brown’s masterpiece does falter, however,
during the only car chase in the movie… which is itself pretty silly and poorly
constructed.
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| Not silly: Stylish men with afros gunning you down from a rooftop |
But we
didn’t come here for the car chases, did we?
Or the bright orange-ish blood and bizarre gunshots (like the very top
of someone’s hair), or even the bizarre inclusion of a Prussian World War I
pistol (check it out: http://bit.ly/TOLeGo),
for that matter. We came here for the
style, and we came here for the soul.
And that’s just what we got…
