By Geno McGahee
You had me at Wings Hauser. I could end the review right there, although I was mildly disappointed that Wings wasn’t kicking ass alongside the good guys, but he was still the man in this. This film is packed with action stars, including Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Pam Grier and Richard Roundtree. It was missing Isaac Hayes though and I would have loved to see Truck Turner join this group of bad asses.
Gangs have taken over and the businesses have left the area. The good people are living in terror. When Kenny (Timothy Lewis) hustles a basketball game for 300 bucks, he pays the ultimate price and this sets of a chain of events that brings the old school tough guys back to the area. When a shop owner becomes a witness and gives the police info, the gangs pays him a visit and shoots him. This brings his son, John Bookman (Fred Williamson) to town and he immediately starts kicking ass. He goes back to his dad’s shop and beats the shit out of the gang members that are looting. One of the gang members look like my friend, Tony Brown. Now, Tony may have been in a gang bang or two, but he was no gang banger. That’s why this was amusing.
Spyro (Christopher B. Duncan) is the leader of the gang and he is now targeting the Bookman family, but the Mayor (Charles Napier) and his assistant Michael Casey (Wings Hauser) want to work out a truce between the Bookman family and the gang. Wings Hauser deserved better than this. He can play a weasel like he does here and as he did in TALES FROM THE HOOD, but Wings would have been an awesome addition to this group to go out there and kick some ass. He should have thrown the crooked mayor off a building and joined the good fight.
John keeps kicking ass, including a group of gang members at a barber shop. It was nice of the gang members to attack him one at a time. They eventually get their shit together and start teaming up on him and when they are about to slice him up, Jake Trevor (Jim Brown) shows up to assist. Jim Brown is a guy that could probably kick anyone’s ass in reality. Seeing him kick ass in this was awesome and seeing him decide to bring some justice to some gang bangers (not my friend Tony. A different sort of gangbang.) was awesome.
Any attempts at a truce don’t work and now it’s old gangstas against the new gangstas and it is just an awesome thing to see. I wish they could come to the cities near me and kick some ass of those pajama pants wearing goons that I drive past every once in a while. Sure, they may not be bad guys but they are wearing pajama pants in public and that tells me that they are dealing drugs and go by the name of “Sandman.” Whatever the case, it’s good to see bad guys taken down. If you are an old school gangsta, please contact me and I’ll give you directions to the cities I live next to.
The war continues as the old school gangstas scare off the young gangbangers. It was definitely an awesome thing to see Roundtree, Williamson, Greer and Brown together walking the streets with guns, but this film sadly runs out of gas.
ORIGINAL GANGSTAS is a tribute to the 1970’s action films, bringing forward a collection of the stars of that era in a timeless piece that most can relate to. This film is good, but considering the elements involved, it is rather disappointing. There was so much potential here and the first 45 minutes fly by with a great pace and fun factor, but the last 45 minutes are a struggle to get through. They ran out of ideas and there was a lot of repetition. The concept was great and some of the writing was good, but the writing wasn’t good throughout. When Williamson says “I started them. I can terminate them,” I was ready to cheer, but those sorts of remarks are totally missing at the tail end of this.
In the end, I do recommend ORIGINAL GANGSTAS, especially if you loved the 1970s action craze. By the way, where the fuck was Dolemite? They should have brought him into this too. I should stop examining this. I’ll keep coming up with missing characters. Anyway, this movie should have been better than this, but it’s still very enjoyable.
