02/04/10 - Black Caesar

Black Caesar (1973, 87 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069792/

I return to the local cinema for a Weird Wednesday feature which is something I haven't done in quite a long time. This time it's apparently a very well regarded blaxploitation gangster film starring Fred Williamson.

Fred Williamson stars as Tommy Gibbs who rises in the ranks to be a prominent gangster in the city. His "woman" during this is Helen (Gloria Hendry) and he sometimes goes to good friends Joe Washington (Philip Roye) or Rev. Rufus (D'Urville Martin) for advice. Serving as the main antagonist is McKinney (Art Lund).

The acting here is actually really good. Fred Williamson creates a really believable character. At the beginning of the film we learn Gibbs has a limp from a child accident (that serves as motivation for the whole film) and Williamson keeps this up the entire film. By the end of the film, it's hardly noticeable as he's pulled this off so well. But besides this, he overall just gives a great performance. The rest of the above mentioned cast also delivers strongly displaying wide ranges of emotion when needed and usually they do this well.

The worst part of Black Caesar is that it doesn't know how it should end. We follow Gibbs in his climb up the gangster ladder and we see him backstab and betray everyone necessary. It makes it hard to like the guy in my opinion, but then we're reminded of the beginning and how this is exactly what happened to him. So the film does raise some interesting points in this regard. But then it doesn't know how it should tie everything off at the end. Should Gibbs kill McKinney? Should Gibbs die himself? As it all ends up, we spend about twenty of the minutes (or more) answering these questions when really ten could have done. It would have left more time to develop some of the surrounding characters. As it stood, Rev. Rufus could have played a much more prominent role but wasn't used as such. Joe Washington was used in a way to make his character more real and it would have been good to have had this happen with Rev. Rufus. There were some scenes with glimpses of this (when Rev. Rufus yells at Gibbs after Gibbs speaks to his father) but not much else is done with them.

The soundtrack is also worth mentioning since James Brown did a lot of the work on it. All in all here, it works pretty well. The worst part is the song that plays when Gibbs discovers his mother has died which I think had the lyrics "Mother done died" and it just sounds really stupid to play at that time. But most of the other music choices are well done and work great. I particularly liked the choices for the beginning and end of the movie which worked well with the high view of the New York City skyline.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. Black Caesar is really a good movie to watch for about an hour. Then it starts tanking and tanking quickly. I cannot emphasize how terrible the ending is and how long and drawn-out it is. But Black Caesar makes up for this with pretty good acting and a really good first portion. I can easily say it's the best blaxploitatoin-gangster film I've ever seen.