Melvin Van Peebles' big Hollywood film is a very smart, funny, and in the end tragic satire of race relations in America c. 1970. Today, it doesn't get nearly the hoopla that "Sweet Sweetback" does, but in a lot of ways it's a better movie. Biting satire is often a better way to express righteous anger than simply getting all righteous, and this is an example: under the laughs, this is a deeply angry film.
Godfrey Cambridge is magnificent in his two-tone role, and the supporting cast (including a couple of routines by the great Mantan Moreland) is also very fine. The rage underpinning the whole story doesn't find full, overt expression until the very last scene, which presages Van Peebles' leap into more obviously black revolutionary politics in "Sweetback." A very good, very funny, important film that deserves to be much better known today than it is.
Godfrey Cambridge is magnificent in his two-tone role, and the supporting cast (including a couple of routines by the great Mantan Moreland) is also very fine. The rage underpinning the whole story doesn't find full, overt expression until the very last scene, which presages Van Peebles' leap into more obviously black revolutionary politics in "Sweetback." A very good, very funny, important film that deserves to be much better known today than it is.