1973 drama
Rating: 16/20
Plot: A black man becomes one of a couple handfuls of token black CIA operatives and uses the newfound knowledge to start an underground revolution.
I just love how this movie ends, completely indeterminately and, in some ways, foreboding. You know as in this whole "This problem is not going away, so Whitey better learn to live with it" type way. And that's probably a spoiler, but I can put a spoiler alert notice right here because I'm the type of guy who starts a write-up about a movie by talking about the ending. You have to love a movie with a title like this. I'm guessing the title had to come before the book was written. Author Sam Greenlee probably noticed that "spook" had thrice meanings (Side note: Is there a word like "dual" but for three? Thrual? That should be a word even though it's difficult to say, especially if you've been stung on the tongue by a hornet three times or something. "Elp! Elp! I ben thung on da tongue thool time!") and said, "A spy, something scary, and a derogatory term for a black person? Hey, I can make a story out of that!" And what a cool story it is although it's a little heavy on the dialogue and paced a little clumsily. Technically, there's not much brilliant going on with the story, but the ideas are so in-your-face that you have to appreciate it all, the incendiary dialogue outlining the problem almost punishingly clear. Lawrence Cook played the lead with a coolness that makes you wonder why he wasn't in a bunch of other blaxploitation action pictures. Even cooler is the score by Herbie Hancock, great 70's fusion funk that fits with the mood perfectly in most of these scenes. The messages behind all the ultra-cool are pretty clear and a lot of it is still relevant today. A conversation with the CIA hopefuls and self-watering-down the competition definitely rings true, as does a theme about underestimating what a group of people are capable of doing. And white people's greatest fear--a black guy who works really hard and has no obvious faults. It's the kind of thing that this movie is all about--turning the American dream into a nightmare. The movie was considered too dangerous for some people back in the early-70's (another great movie from the year I was born, by the way), but I'm glad it survived.
I swear that ubiquitous chubby white guy with a mustache who fights Bruce Lee and Sonny Chiba in Fist of Fury and Street Fighter respectively is in this thing, too. Either that or all white guys in kung-fu movies look the same. And yes, I'm probably aware that that sounds a little racist, but I refuse to apologize for it.
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