



I am not black. Just wanted to get that out in the beginning. I am, in
fact, a middleclass white guy from Indiana. Thus, I cannot by any
means "understand" the problems of being a young black man in the inner
city. Our movie was made in 1972, but judging by every episode of
Cops and CSI: New York I've ever seen, I'd guess that
things haven't really changed much in the last 35 years for young black
men in our big cities. The clothes have changed, the music is different,
and the cops drive better cars, but overall the same cycles of poverty
and racism still exist.
Ok, this movie has been edited with some considerable skill, even though
I myself don't care for the end results. They shot the entire movie like
regular, and then snipped and spliced it to make frequent (like every two
minutes) flashbacks. The result is a very disjointed film that you really
have to pay attention to every minute to keep up with what's happened.
This style also makes writing a review damn near impossible, so I will
just tell the story in "real time" without the flashbacks, ok?
And now on to our show...
Our movie concerns a young black man named Johnny Johnson, played by
35-year old Billy Dee Williams, an established a-list actor in Hollywood.
Williams had (still does, I assume) a strong social conscience about black
issues and this movie was his brainchild. This entire movie is filmed in
the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles, which probably haven't changed
much since this movie was made.

Johnny Johnson.
To the movie's credit, his character of Johnny is a bit of an enigma, and
not just your standard stereotypical Angry Black Man. He's college
educated and very bright for one, despite being so virulently
anti-establishment. He also has a white girlfriend at one point, despite
being about as radically anti-white as you can get (I find humor in the
old Saturday Night Live Eddie Murphy quote, "I hate all white
people, but I love white women.").

"I tell you woman, once you go black..."
Johnny is angry, bitter and resentful of both the fact that he's black
and that he's not white, if that makes any sense. He blames all his
problems (and by extension all the problems of his entire race) on
anyone who is white, and yet covets the very things that white people
have that he doesn't. All around him he sees (or chooses to see, a big
distinction) racism and inequality and oppression, problems that are
totally out of his control (or so he thinks).
Johnny's oft-stated solution to this problem is to bring the fight to the
white man, so to speak. The line he uses is that they won't understand
until "white kids are being shot in the streets". Johnny has embraced
the black militant manifesto of violence being the only way to get the
point across.
In the first third of the movie we get to know Johnny. We see him with
his mom and dad (who don't share his young angry militancy), with his
church group (where he's a good role model to the kids), out on the job
hunt (where his skin color is a disadvantage), and with his friends (some
of whom are the type that will encourage him to go get himself killed).
We see him getting hassled by the cops and raging about the injustice of
inner city life. We see him meet a sage homeless dude (the most lucid
character in the whole movie). We learn that the cops don't like Jews,
either, and we learn that McDonald Douglass Aircraft Incorporated is
racist in their employment practices (I'd sue).

Johnny.
We also see him in love with a very beautiful young dance instructor
named Luann. They really do seem in love, and the two actors do a great
job of "acting in love", which is much harder to do than you might
imagine. Luann is a tall and slim woman, with the strong lithe legs of a
dancer and a pretty face, topped with a 1970s afro. As a note, it also
seems like Johnny is banging the white girl on the side, unbeknownst to
Luann.

Luann.
This movie has an "important message" to present. Racism is endemic
and bad and we should all get our heads out of the sand and take notice,
good message, valid for us all. The problem is that this message is
pounded into the viewer with a jackhammer, 80 straight minutes of
unrelenting social cudgeling by every character. Johnny especially has
about eight or nine extended monologues (bitter diatribes, really) about
the plight of the black man and the abuse of the white man. I feel like
I'm watching An Inconvenient Truth while Al Gore sits in my lap
giving me a personal audio commentary track.
Johnny's road to an early grave begins with him getting involved with
some Black Panther-esque underground warrior types. These men are
even more violent and bloodthirsty than Johnny, and suck him into their
world. These men recognize a certain quality in Johnny, a natural innate
leadership ability that they hope will be used to further their radical
black power agenda. This same leadership quality could also be used to
help the community, of course, but not in this movie.

Johnny's band of brothas.
The plan is for a group of sympathetic white kids, the kind of liberal,
educated kids who often look in the mirror and feel ashamed for being
rich and white, to help them fight the cops. The white kids will meet
up with Johnny's band and fight together in the streets to get the point
across to America that racism is bad. A bunch of black people with guns
is a "criminal gang", but an armed band of black and white people is a
"social statement".


Cops!



