I've been on a bit of a jazz kick lately, and so I've heard the Bobby Womack song a whole bunch on the radio, and so I wind up googling it and discover that it's the theme of a movie of the same name, a noir movie set in Harlem in the 1970s. So tonight I watched the movie, and I had a great time. We follow three guys who've pulled off a robbery from the mob and then the mobsters and the cops who are after 'em. Richard Ward as Doc Johnson was the absolute stand-out to me as Harlem's head gangster, the big fish in his small pond who despite being treated with contempt by his superiors (and the cops) holds his ground and comes out ahead. And he's not even a main character!
The whole movie has some fantastic motion with camera shots that wouldn't seem too out of place today, apparently due to some newer, lighter camera technology. And of course the whole thing is a period piece from 50 years ago, which can make some of the outfits and sets illegible to the viewer of today. I've tentatively concluded that the brighly coloured outfits and most of the stuff that looks "70s chic" was, in addition to being very 1970s indeed, were here markers of money and style. Part of this is probably that I've watched enough Columbo to know just how beige most people's coats and suits were.
Likewise it's hard to tell how much of the racial tensions and language (and you're gonna hear a few n-words) are true to the New York of the time and how much was from the imagination of the writer. Race and racism suffuse the movie, but with the sense that it's the sort of gritty realism necessary to make a movie set in 1970s Harlem have any versimillitude at all. The whole movie is Gritty Dudes Doing Gritty Stuff and never gets up so close and personal with any character except the shitty old white cop to actually know how anyone feels about anything, which is to say, it treats racism and police brutality as a fact of life, a character trait, rather than at all pausing to comment. It keeps an emotional distance from its protagonists that feels awkward, and it's hard to say 50 years down the line if that's because of how much all movies of the 70s were like that or whether I should accuse the director of making an exploitation movie. Nobody's got much more character motivation than Let's Finally Get Out Of Harlem Right After We Sneak Past These Gangsters or I Sure Am Gonna Retire From The Force After This Case.
All of which is to say: if you had this in 4k rez and dialled up the dynamic range a bit there's a lot about the plot, pacing and cinematics of this movie that feel pretty modern. With a plot where we see who did the crime and everyone else is chasing after them, you half expect Natasha Lyonne to show up in the second half. It was engaging from start to finish, and despite the somewhat two-dimensional characters the actors certainly did a great job with the two they'd been given.
All in all, a recommend. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this film before, because it does stand out for its era.