Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Trouble Man

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Mark Tolch
    Senior Member

  • Trouble Man



    Released By: Kino Lorber
    Released On: October 18, 2016
    Director: Ivan Dixon
    Cast: Robert Hooks, Paul Winfield, Paula Kelly, Julius Harris, William Smithers
    Year: 1972
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    If you were to poll the average person and ask them the name of the Black private dick that was a sex machine to all the chicks, they would probably respond with, "Shaft!"...and they'd be at least partially damn right. But in 1972, another bad mother who wouldn't cop out when danger was all about hit the scene; Mr. T (Robert Hooks) in Ivan Dixon's Trouble Man, with a screenplay penned by John D.F. Black, the same cat who brought you Richard Roundtree's complicated man.

    Mr. T. is the man in his neighborhood...a sharp-dressed man with eyes on every corner and a lady on every block, the man who can get your multiple-offender nephew bonded out of jail with a word, or, with a well-placed backhand, force a shifty slumlord to take better care of his tenants. When he's not cruising the streets in his Lincoln Continental or stepping out in the finest threads available, Mr. T. holds court down at Jimmy's a neighborhood pool hall, where he also happens to be reigning champion in all things billiards. After schooling "Texas Blood", an insecure-born in the junkyard mother hustler on the proper way to run a table, T gets a request to sit down with Chalky Price (Paul Winfield), a neighborhood entrepreneur with a problem.

    It turns out that Chalky has formed an interracial alliance with the Caucasian Pete, in an effort to control the craps games in town, an alliance that is doing fairly well in spreading the wealth from the White section of town to the Black, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, somebody else has gotten wind of this profitable venture, and has taken to sticking up the games and making off with the loot. Knowing that clout that T carries in the neighborhood, Chalky and Pete hire him on for the princely sum of ten thousand 1972 dollars to show up at the games and pretend that he's there to roll the dice like the rest of the players. If the game is held up, T will use his power and connections to track the culprits down, and order will be restored.

    Mr. T may be lucky in a lot of areas, but craps isn't one of them; his first appearance at a game brings the stick-up crew, who get away clean except for one of their crew that Chalky manages to gun down in the doorway. Taking off the thief's mask reveals Abby Walsh, a well-connected man with the crew belonging to Big (Julius Harris), a no-nonsense mofo who rivals T for badassery. Big doesn't buy the story that Abby would run a scheme on his own, and decides that the shooting is an effort to move in on Big's turf...by Chalky and Mr. T. As a matter of fact, Big has heard that T is the one that shot Abby, and dumped him in a vacant lot, and if that isn't enough to put the Trouble Man in some serious trouble, somebody has dropped a dime to the cops spilling the same story. Hounded by the police who want to see T go down on a murder rap is bad enough, but if he can't track down the man who actually dumped Abby's body, Big's crew may put him in the morgue before the cops get the chance to slap the cuffs on him.

    Following the infamous Shaft by one year, Trouble Man has no apologies to make to Mr. Roundtree or any of the other serious contenders in the Blaxploitation genre. This is a film that gets moving right out of the gate and gathers momentum, laying smackdowns along the way and not stopping to take names. Black's screenplay is simple but solid, wisely giving the excellent cast a lot of room to breathe life into their characters. Hooks is the obvious draw, here, playing Mr. T like a champ, moving with purpose and throwing out barbed one-liner insults as necessary, but Winfield and Harris are also stellar.

    Gritty downtown street violence, a host of colourful characters, and a scorching selection of music from Marvin Gaye, fast action Direction from Ivan Dixon; all signs here point to a real winner. And that's Mr. Trouble, 99 minutes of pure grit entertainment that stands the test of time, shaming the critics who slammed it at the time by remaining as hard as ever.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Kino Lorber brings Mr. Trouble to Blu-ray in an AVC-encoded 1.85:1 transfer that looks great. Though there are some very (very!) minor issues here and there...some shimmering, some softness, a little debris...but overall, this is a solid transfer with good black levels and the level of grain that most of us like to see in our gritty 70's action flicks. Colours are well-represented with a dynamic palette...dig those clothes, baby...and the level of detail is high pretty much throughout.

    Audio is carried on an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that is robust for a stereo track, with clear and consistent dialogue balanced nicely with the incredible score and other sound effects. A couple of instances of ADR stand out, but we'll chalk that up to source material. Hiss is non-existent, as are pops and other audio flaws.

    There are no subtitles available.

    Speaking of audio, the first supplement is a feature-length commentary from film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Howard S. Berger, that sounds like it may have had a tin can involved somewhere in the recording process. Berger sounds like he's across the room from Thompson, and personally, I found it annoying and distracting to listen to the commentary. The two cover the reception to films like Trouble Man in a pre-Tarantino world, and their exposure to them as younger kids, and get into a pretty lengthy analysis of the characters. They also discuss the actors and crew, and what they did before and after the film, as well as the soundtrack.

    Five Trailers are also included, for Trouble Man, Truck Turner, Across 110th Street, Cotton Comes To Harlem, and Report To The Commissioner.

    The Final Word:

    If you're a fan of action, 70's flicks, Blaxploitation, and just good films in general, Trouble Man belongs in your collection. Aside from flawed audio on the commentary, the Blu-ray offers a worthy upgrade to existing releases.


    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!




























      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    • Hot Spur (Severin Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Severin Films
      Released on: April 30th, 2024.
      Director: Lee Frost
      Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
      Year: 1969
      Purchase From Amazon

      Hot Spur – Movie Review:

      Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:53 AM
    • Death Squad (Mondo Macabro) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Mondo Macabro
      Released on: April 9th, 2024.
      Director: Max Pecas
      Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
      Year: 1985
      Purchase From Amazon

      Death Squad – Movie Review:

      Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:46 AM
    • Roommates (Quality X) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Quality X
      Released on: February 28th, 2024.
      Director: Chuck Vincent
      Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
      Year: 1982
      Purchase From Amazon

      Roommates – Movie Review:

      Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:10 PM
    • Night Of The Blood Monster (Blue Underground) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Blue Underground
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Jess Franco
      Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
      Year: 1970
      Purchase From Amazon

      Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:

      Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:07 PM
    • Phase IV (Vinegar Syndrome) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Saul Bass
      Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
      Year: 1974
      Purchase From Amazon

      Phase IV – Movie Review:

      Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:02 PM
    • The Bounty Hunter Trilogy (Radiance Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Radiance Films
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
      Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
      Year: 1969-1972
      Purchase From Amazon

      The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:

      Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this
      ...
      03-13-2024, 11:30 AM
    Working...
    X