Black Caesar (1973)

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Writer & director Larry Cohen chronicles the rise of an urban, African-American youth to the position of a New York City crime boss. This is a prime example of a Blaxploitation crime thriller with our hero Fred Williamson comes up the ranks from being a lowly shoeshine boy to a top metropolitan mobster. This 1973 actioneer contains nudity, profanity, blood, and violence. Several individuals die in this R-rated epic. Williamson is good as the protagonist who pulls himself up by his own boot straps and becomes the number one crime boss in New York City. Cohen doesn't let our hero off the hooks. Gloria Hendry, John Larch, D'Urville Martin and Julius Harris co-star. Cohen's mobster movie clocks in at 94 minutes without a shred of too much or too little. John Larch makes a convincing corrupt NYPD cop.

Director and writer Larry Cohen who also wrote other classic flicks, Cellular 2004, Phone Booth 2002, The Ex 1997 and Maniac Cop 2 1990 as well as writing and directing another classic flick, God Told Me To 1976 has created another gem in Black Caesar.Starring Fred Williamson who has also been in other classic flicks, From Dusk Till Dawn 1996, Vigilante 1983 and Inglorious Bastards 1978.Also starring Gloria Hendry who was also in another classic flick, Across 110th Street 1972.Also starring Art Lund.I enjoyed the shootouts.If you enjoyed this as much as I did then check out other classic gangster in the hood flicks, Boyz n the Hood 1991, Menace II Society 1993 and Trespass 1992.

Movie starts out in 1953 where we see young black Tommy Gibbs doing jobs for the mob. He starts developing his own little gang. As he gets older (and becomes Fred Williamson) he works his way into the white mob--even though they don't want "ni**ers" (as they say throughout the film). Then he steals some damaging ledgers and uses it to run crime in the city, help black people and keep the evil white people at bay. But the white guys in the mob aren't about to give up...Perhaps I'm not the best person to review a Larry Cohen movie--he's the producer, writer and director of this. I've never liked any of his movies and he makes really bad low budget films (unlike Roger Corman who makes good ones). This one is full of goofs--I love it when you hear a baby crying on the soundtrack but you can clearly see that the baby isn't making a sound! This is full of bad dialogue and has a very predictable script. This is the type of gangster film Hollywood was making in the 1930s--it's just done with black characters now. The movie also contains plenty of swearing and some pretty graphic bloody violence. Also I can't think of any film I've ever seen that has such a negative view of women--they're either vicious witches, use sex to get what they want or are slapped around left and right. It doesn't help at all that Gloria Hendry (the main victim) gives a terrible performance.To be truthful I was struggling to stay awake. The bursts of violence helped and Williamson is tall, handsome and pretty good in the title role. But the technical goofs (there are plenty) and the by the numbers story got annoying. Poorly made on a low budget. Check out "Foxy Brown", "Coffy" or "Blacula" for a good blaxploitation film.

Now, when I speak of the accuracy of this movie I am, of course, speaking either prophetically, I guess, or hypocritically, because I am neither black nor old enough to have been alive when it was made. Nonetheless, having had bad experiences with blaxploitation films (such as the astonishingly bad Sweet Sweetback's Badaassss Song), I recently saw an outstanding documentary called Badasss Cinema which really opened my eyes to this entire genre and taught me about the things that had previously caused me to sort of look down on some of the films. I have a tendency to pick movies apart when a lot of really little things bother me (the James Bond movies are particularly susceptible to this), and that happened in a major way in watching movies like Sheba, Baby, Coffy, and Black Mama, White Mama. It was interesting to learn the history behind this genre, as well as the way it seemed to appear, become wildly popular, and then fizzle out with surprising speed. The genre's disappearance can largely, and not surprisingly, be blamed on Hollywood, for reasons which I'll leave to the above mentioned documentary to explain. Armed with a new outlook on blaxploitation, I rented Black Caesar and was pleasantly and not so pleasantly surprised at the same time, strangely enough. It is not surprising that a blaxploitation film almost named after one of the first gangster films ever made , Little Caesar would attempt to resemble the most famous gangster film of all time, which was released the year before. The infamous Fred Williamson plays the part of Tommy Gibbs, a hardened youth who grew up with an intense desire to firmly establish himself as a force to be reckoned with on the streets. He finds tremendous success, and the movie moves forward making intense sociological statements about the plight of black people in early 1970s America. Unfortunately, as the movie goes on it dissolves into more and more ham-handed lashes out at white people in general, especially that favorite blaxploitation scapegoat, the White Cop, or the White Guy in Suit. While the African American community certainly had, and still has, in many ways, a lot to lash out and to be resentful about, it was really sad to see such a smart and well made film resort to contriving situations between Gibbs and white people who were so outwardly racist and brutal toward him just for the sake of setting themselves up for his revenge. The shoe-polish scene near the end of the film, as well as the ear scene relatively early in the film are prime examples. (possible spoiler) On a more subtle note, it is also noteworthy that a great length of time is spent showing Gibbs staggering through the streets of New York at the end of the movie because of a gunshot wound. This takes place in broad daylight and not a single person tries to help him, offers to call the police, or even so much as puts a hand over their mouth in sorrow or sympathy. I really enjoyed Black Caesar and I think it's one of the better blaxploitation films that came out of the 1970s. But you can certainly scratch subtlety off of its list of successes.