 Quentin Tarantino grabbed the theme song from this movie for his own film "Jackie Brown" a couple of years ago. Tarantino's got good b-grade sensibility and had he been shooting flicks back in the early '70's, he'd have shot movies like "Across 110th Street". Bobby Womak wrote the music - cool, hip, urban soul - for Barry Shear's "Across 110th Street" back in 1972. Womak's urban punch works better here than it does in Tarantino's underrated flick - but that doesn't matter in Tarantino's case. His use of the score was more for love than effect. Womak's score for "110th" sounds muddy, dirty, and made seedy this movie's middle name. On the heels of "The Godfather" and "The French Connection", Shear decided to make "110th" a bastard hybrid of those flicks (with a dash of "Shaft" and "Superfly" thrown in), and bitch slap the audience with incendiary racism and back alley brutality. Everybody in "110th" is discriminated against - Italians, African-Americans, women and people getting up in age. New York looks like a rotted, maggot filled apple and almost makes "Taxi Driver" look like a trip to Disneyworld. Its shot in monochromatic tones, uses burned out warehouses, tenements and alleys as its pre-apocalyptic backdrop. The only real color comes from spurting blood. Anthony Quinn, an over the hill, angry NYPD detective is brutal in this film, knocking the shit out of anybody who has an opinion that opposes his. He's a bigot and hates his newly assigned partner, played with simmering dignity by Yaphet Kotto. What balls Quinn had playing this role with such violent aplomb. He curses everybody, slams them with his swollen fists and kicks them when they're down, just for the hell of it. The story's pretty hack - the Mob, headed by Anthony Franciosa, is butting heads with a Harlem dope cartel when three black dudes dressed like cops rip-off a bunch of the mob's greenback dead presidents. Its hell up in Harlem and the dego clan's ready to kick some serious black ass. Meanwhile, the NYPD dicks have to clean house but end up two steps behind and kicking booty a buck too late. The action scenes are bone breaking, brutal, and explosive. Nobody's immune to getting their ass kicked. And, like other films of this type in the '70's, there's no hero lines drawn - everybody reeks in this world. There's nobody to root for here, making it anti-heroic all the way to the cool, unpredictable ending. "110th" doesn't hold back with its take on racism and nobody on either side of the race fence gets together - its just pure in your face hatred. No kissy face making up here, no 'we are the world' hand holding b.s., no white bread suburban baloney. Whites and blacks barely tolerate each other in "110th" and only if they're forced to as in the case of Quinn and Kotto being slammed together busting balls. There's no doubt - they can't stand each other. "Across 110th Street" is the daddy of the dreaded 'blaxploitation' genre with brains, boiling over in urban reality. About the author: See author's other reviews. You may read another review, submit your own, or return home. |
