Movie Details
| Title: | Across 110th Street | |
| Director: | Barry Shear | |
| Year: | 1972 | |
| Genre: | Soul Cinema | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 02.21.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 02.21.07 | Netflix | This one kind of straddles the line between blaxploitation and straight-up gritty 70s crime. Awesome. That's like going to order a prostitute and finding one that also cooks you dinner. My love for grungy location photography is fully stroked here, showcasing what has to be some of the lowest points in NYC neglect. Maye Wild Style shows it off a bit more but... still. And I loved Antonio Fargas in this, throwing caustin to the wind and entertaining a squad of whores with such lines as "money money money!" claiming he got it by winning a beauty contest. Unfortunately... well.. I mean i really wanted to like Anthony Quinn in this, but his accent seems to change countries with every scene and he doesn't do much with his cliche'd writing. I did like how he ends up but pretty much the whole way through I thought he was a weak point in an otherwise solid movie. True, it trades the blaxploitation funk for the crazy mobsters and police machismo but like i said... to me that's like ordering a chocolate sandwhich and getting peanut butter for free. A big although though... although i love the theme as i know it, i was very surprised to not hear it appear in the film. Under the beginning titles, it's much faster with near-completely different instrumentation. The ongoing score was still good and all... I guess all these years i've been loving the soundtrack version of the song or the single version or whatever else version gets more strings and slowed down a bit. i dunno and I'm too lazy to look it up. Good movie though, if you ask me, although as a blaxploitation or a crime I'd say it was just run of the mill. And true this is not even close to the only black crime movie in the genre, but this one just seemed much more farther away from "pure" soul to me for some reason. I'm probably wrong but oh well. |
