This movie is not good.
I realize it made an huge impact but this movie is not good. It's a 15 minute story in a 90 minute movie.
shareno it is not
not good at allWhen there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...
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MovieChat Forums > Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1973) Discussion > This movie is not good.
There were a lot of movies made in the late 1960's and 1970's that were "must see" at the time because they were new and different and relevant and revolutionary, etc. But now people will re-watch one and say "what did we ever see in that?" There's probably a whole classification of "what did we ever see in them" movies. Without the novelty, and the sense of keeping up with the times, and being relevant and hip, the movies themselves are unwatchable.
One of the things that made Star Wars special in 1977 was that it was a big relief from the gritty, "relevant", message movies. And it was a big collective experience, which I think helped change the trend. The movies of the 1980's were much better.
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It was okay in the sense that it showed a Black protagonist fending on his own and within his community.
Overall though, they could have cut a good 45 minutes from the film and it would have been fine. von Peebles utters language a good three or four times in the movie. We have no idea what his motivations are outside of lust and flight and violence.
The beginning of the movie was...otherworldly to put it politely; I had no idea what was going on. It seemed like a film within a film and jarring at that. Basically public prostitution. And on that topic, don't get me started on the film's depiction of females...
I rated it a 6 here for its importance to Black cinema, but it's a pretty awful pile of pellicule, editing and jump cuts aside.
von Peebles utters language a good three or four times in the movie. We have no idea what his motivations are outside of lust and flight and violence.
One may situate the nature of Van Peebles' protagonist by comparing him to some of the other leading male stars or performances of the era. Most notably, Van Peebles is analogous here to Clint Eastwood, or possibly Lee Marvin or Steve McQueen or Charles Bronson, or even to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967) or Paul Newman in Hombre (1966). These actors or performances often distinguished themselves by a severe lack of dialogue, an absence of conventional moral motivation, and a muted quality that reflected an utter unwillingness to explain themselves. share