Detroit 9000 (1973)

Very Cool!!!

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

After a fundraiser for a black politician is robbed, Detroit police put two detectives, one white (Alex Rocco) and one black (Hari Rhodes), on the case, who try to work together under boiling political pressure.Although Orville H. Hampton worked mostly in lower budget films, he actually had an Oscar nomination under his belt by the time he wrote this script. Hampton had written the now-forgotten "One Potato, Two Potato" (1964). Marks was responsible for bringing in Rocco, who he had worked with on "Bonnie's Kids". Although he plays a policeman here, Rocco had actually grown up among Boston's Winter Hill Gang.Hari Rhodes is a perfect choice for the role here. In a film about racial politics, he is more knowledgeable than most. While any person of color has experienced racism at some point, Rhodes literally wrote the book on it: "A Chosen Few", which was published in 1965.Scatman Crothers is a pleasant surprise, even if his role is not as large as it could be. And the idea of "Buzz the Fuzz" is awfully clever, perhaps something more big cities ought to think about. This film shows the racial politics between police and the black community, and this certainly has not changed in the forty years since this film debuted. If anything, it is something we are even more acutely aware of now.

Arthur Marks somehow knew how to do it: combining the tough and thoughtful police-thriller with a seeming exploitation (or blaxploitation) flick into something worthwhile. It may not be for some; matter of fact, from all I can tell looking at various reviews it's made little of an impression aside from negative. But I was drawn into this seedy, multi-racial tale of dirty criminals and (some) dirty cops and a dirty politician because of the simple strengths of the acting and (most of) the writing, not to mention an explosive climax and a nifty opening heist scene. It's even more than nifty; Marks somehow has the cojones to make a poignant moment in this scene, as well as a couple of other times in the film (i.e. Ruby dying in Jessie's arms), where the singer who's doing a number gets cut-off by the tape recording telling everyone to get down and fork over the cash and jewels... and she just goes on singing, and a song sung with a mournful voice.The nuts and the bolts of the plot are that in Detroit, where according to officer/athlete Jessie Williams (Hari Rhodes) his new partner Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco) is in the minority in the black-dominant area, a heist has taken place during a fund-raiser for an up-and-coming politician (perfectly one-note Rudy Challenger), and there's already tension: is it an all-black gang, or all-white? Can there be a crack when those the cops find immediately shoot back and end up shot dead? It all leads down to a pimp and his girl, or so it's thought, and not everything is what it seems with tough/smart cop Bassett, yada yada. Describing a lot of the plot isn't necessary, as much of the interest in Detroit 9000 are in scenes of pure attitude, of this time and place in this city a microcosm of racial strife and unrest. If anything it's not even a blaxploitation movie, per say, but something of a black pride movie in a strange way. And there's at the least some equality: the gang is found to be multi-racial, including a dead) Indian from Canada! There are ways this movie can get cheesy or stuck in its 1973 time-frame, and of course the clothes, the slang, and the soundtrack all speak to that. But I enjoyed how Hampton's screenplay struck a line between giving many of these characters, including supporting ones like Ruby Harris and Ferby some personality past their stock characters, or how the wit creeps up as really unexpected (the line Clayton's "assistant" gives to a prostitute is so classic QT lifted it for Jackie Brown). And Rhodes and Rocco, otherwise usually relegated to supporting and character-actor parts in other movies, get to show what their made of as cops on a dirty case that just gets dirtier. Lastly, without sacrificing some sophistication in the writing or a refreshingly bittersweet ending, Marks tops it all off with that big chase going six or seven ways across the railroad tracks and fields and cemeteries of *really* gritty parts of Detroit and put to a raucous, spot-on soundtrack.In a word (and I can almost hear a James Lipton voice saying this as I type this): under-rated.

A brazen band of no-count thieves rob roughly $400,000 in money and valuable merchandise from a political fund-raiser being held by ambitious black congressman Aubrey Clayton (a perfectly smarmy Rudy Challenger). It's up to suave black Sargeant Jesse Williams (the super smooth Hari Rhodes) and slobby, cynical white Lieutenant Daniel Bassett (a fine performance by the ever-funny and engaging Alex Rocco; Moe Greene in "The Godfather") to get to the bottom of things before the whole city erupts into chaos and racial violence.Director Arthur ("Bucktown") Marks keeps the pace speeding along at a steady breakneck clip and stages the thrilling action scenes with considerable rip-snorting brio, further enhancing this already fun and entertaining crime caper picture with amusing amounts of his trademark dark humor (my two all-time favorite moments are when hooker Vonetta McGee complains to her pimp that a john treated her like a piece of meat and the positively gut-busting scene where a hoodlum exclaims "Mother*beep*er!" after taking a fatal bullet to the chest). The uneasy give-and-take relationship between Williams and Bassett adds greatly to the tension, leading to a wonderfully ambiguous and genuinely startling climax that packs a substantial punch because of its marvelously up-in-the-air moral ambivalence and uncertainty. This isn't your garden variety simplistic cops and robbers yarn where there's a fine line between the good guys and the bad guys. Instead almost everyone in this movie is either on the make or on the take, creating a stark and brutal world where morals are decidedly gray at best and such sterling virtues as honor, honesty and loyalty are hard to come by. It's the powerfully vivid way Marks depicts this sense of pervasive corruption which in turn makes "Detroit 9000" a superior crime thriller. Luchi DeJesus supplies a fine, funky-throbbing score while Harry May's rough cinematography gives the film an appropriately raw and gritty look. Popping up in nifty bit parts are the ubiquitous Bob Minor as a cop-killing criminal, Marilyn Joi as a prostitute dancing in a bordello, and the great Scatman Crothers in an especially lively cameo as a fiery hell-and-brimstone bible-banging priest. A real solid and satisfying little winner.

This film comes very close to being one of the great action flicks of the Seventies, but just falls a little short. The opening scene of the heist is very well done, and the shoot-out at the end was great, but a plodding middle section hurt the overall film. A Great soundtrack helps through the occasional lulls. Fans of the black films of that era will not be disappointed.