Hit Man is a bleak helping of Blaxploitation that just hit Blu-ray thanks to Warner Archives. The film is a remake of sorts, of the 1971 gangster classic Get Carter, which was based on the 1970 novel by Ted Lewis – Jack’s Return Home, Hit Man relocates the story from the UK, to Hollywood, a year after the genre classic’s initial release. While the film is pretty much a beat for beat adaptation, director George Armitage claimed to have never seen Get Carter or read the book it was based on. The film stars a young Bernie Casey as our titular Hit Man, who is probably best known as Bill and Ted’s history teacher, who had just left football for acting, along with Pam Grier here credited as “Pamela Grier” fresh off her woman in prison triple bill of The Big Bird Cage, Women in Cages and the Big Doll House.
After a far-out retro intro credit sequence, the film follows Tyrone Tackett (Bernie Casey), a retired Oakland officer with a dark past, who returns to LA after the suspicious death of his brother Cornell, who was the opposite of his law-abiding sibling and had embedded himself into various organized crime rackets. Tyrone quickly sets up camp at a seedy local hotel and begins a descent into the underbelly of late 60s Los Angeles looking for answers and ultimately loses himself. Luckily it has been decades since I saw the original or the Stallone remake, so I was simply along for the ride and it’s something that this film does rather well, first disarming the viewer with its campier Blaxploitation trappings, until the third act when we discover what really happened to Cornell and Tyrone gets his bloody revenge.
While these characters are your familiar archetypes in the subgenre, I think the cast here is what really makes this film as good as it is. While Casey does the tough guy just fine, there are some tender moments with his niece that offer an unexpected glimpse into him as a caring uncle that adds some real gravity to his relationship of trying to look out for his wayward niece. Same with Grier, who’s lust for stardom allows her to offer up a bit of legitimate vulnerability to the rather dapper detective. That being the case, the film also has one of the most insane kills in a Blaxploitation I’ve ever seen involving an actual lion, which along with a dog fighting scene early on may feel a bit too real for some viewers.
Hit Man was a one two punch of old school Blaxploitation, that hit harder than I was expecting. Forget the Blaxploitation angle, I think the reason this film hits as hard as it does was transplanting the story of Get Carter into the seedy Hollywood underbelly post the Tate-LaBianca murders. It’s that event that really brought to light the dangers that lie slumbering in the city of dreams. That was nothing less than a stroke of pure genius given that third act twist that sets all the pieces into motion and having that history really makes it feel just that much more authentic.
Next up was 1974’s Three the Hard Way, another Warner Archives Blu-ray release starring Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Jim Kelly who at the time were at the height of their game and are directed here by Gordon Parks Jr. who made the film as a follow up to Super Fly. While Jimmy Lait (Brown) is attempting to uncover the mystery behind his friend’s attack, he accidentally unravels a plot by a group of neo-nazi white supremacists, who are gearing poison the water supplies of Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Los Angeles, with a diabolical concoction that will kill anyone who is African American. To complicate matters, the group not only kills his friend, but kidnaps Jimmy’s girl (Sheila Frazier), so he’s got to save her too,
Three the Hard Way, is a fun enough action film that loses itself trying to balance the narrative between its trio of leading kickers of nazi ass. The interaction between the trio is great when they’re together, but no sooner do they assemble to battle the man, they have to split back up to save their respective cities. It’s serviceable, but never gets too deep, unlike Hit Man that is much more densely layered. While the bad guys are the worst possible kind, except for the opening they are kept to parody and feel relatively harmless and cartoonish compared to our trio of lethal heroes. The big draw here for fans however is this is the first time this film is presented fully uncut with its original music intact, scanned from the negative.
Both films are presented in new HD transfers thanks to the Warner Archive from the negatives and they have never looked better. I think Hit Man definitely stands out from the pair with not only its hard hitting narrative, but its snapshot of Los Angeles in the late 60s early 70s, which is as much a character in the film as the enigmatic lead. It’s that boulevard of broken dreams thematic tissue that lets it transcend being simply an action film and gives it some real teeth compared to most films in this sub-genre. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see so many neo nazi’s meet their maker in Three the Hard Way, especially in this day and age, but I also think it’s how they’re presented here that makes them feel more like canon fodder than an actual threat.
If you’re a fan of action or Blaxploitation both films are worth a pickup because unlike some in the sub-genre they deliver on what the poster and trailer promises.
