FILM REVIEW OF ''FORCE OF EXECUTION" (2013)

An above-average Los Angeles crime thriller about a power struggle between two rival gangs, “Force of Execution” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) manages to be a predictable but entertaining B-movie actioneer that eschews both romance and sex. Ostensibly, Steven Seagal takes top billing, but newcomer Bren Foster of "War Flowers" handles the heavy lifting.  Apparently, Seagal and Foster constitute co-stars of a sort, with the demographic appeal of both actors covering the 15-to-4o year old audience.  The old will ogle it for Seagal, while the young will undoubtedly identify more with the younger, athletic Foster.  As the feared but respected crime boss Mr. Alexander, Steven Seagal wears a sculpted Van Dyke beard and rules the neighborhood with a sense of violent compassion.  Above all, he is the kind of crime boss who resents being told what to do.  Before he embarked on his criminal career, Alexander refined his art of warfare during his service to the government.  Since then he has parlayed his on-the-job government training to maintain his own criminal empire. As Mr. Alexander's most trusted executioner for 15 years, rugged Bren Foster plays Roman Hurst.  Hurst performs a hit in prison for Mr. Alexander during the first quarter hour of the action.  Based on the duplicitous word of a Judas-minded inmate, Iceman (Ving Rhames of "Pulp Fiction"), Hurst killed the wrong guy. Afterward, Hurst has to fight his way, one guard at a time, out of the prison.  Not only does Hurst admit failure but also he willingly accepts any punishment that Alexander feels appropriate. Alexander turns Hurst over to the African-American gang, and they wield hammers without mercy on his hands. Basically, when they conclude their anatomical retribution, the best that Hurst can do is spiral into alcoholism until the urge to straighten himself and a Mexican witch doctor revitalize him. 

The themes of reformation and rejuvenation pervade “Force of Execution.” "Maximum Conviction" director Keoni Waxman along with "Cold Sweat" scenarist Richard Beattie and freshman scribe Michael Black have enlivened this formulaic crime thriller with the maimed warrior plot.  This plot usually occurs in martial arts movies and westerns.  Roman Hurst becomes a "Django" type hero who has to rehab himself with the help of a Hispanic witch doctor, Jimmy Peanuts (Danny Trejo of the "Machete" movies), who cooks for Mr. Alexander in one of his diners.  The use of scorpions to convert our hero's lax hands into weapons of lethal power seems wholly improbable, but the idea sounds cool and the sight of Trejo fiddling with the critters is neat. The chief problem with "Force of Execution" isn't the action-laden plot with a body count, but the pedestrian dialogue and the shortage of cool Seagal scenes. Every good Seagal movie and some of his bad ones always boast a memorable combat scene where our soft-spoken hero demolishes the opposition with minimal force. “The “Under Siege” movies as well as “The Glimmer Man” exemplify Seagal at his coolest with several spectacular kick ass scenes.  "Force of Execution" lacks those cool scenes.  Roman Hurst has some nice fights that generate terrific velocity.  He specializes in a spinning kick like Jean-Claude Van Damme, but Hurst doesn't flaunt much personality in his characterization. Grim, tough, resourceful, he appears to be channeling Daniel Craig, but he needs to develop a personality.  It is like having a stunt man play a leading role.  Nothing really makes him sympathetic.  His miraculous recovery is difficult to accept.

The thesping in "Force Execution" is okay. Trejo gives the most charismatic performance as a down-to-earth short order cook. He doesn't play his usual tough-guy type snd he doesn't shed his shirt to display his heavily tattooed physique. He qualifies as the most likable character in the action, while Jenny Gabrielle is both pretty and vulnerable as Karen. She plays the blond waitress & cashier at Alexander's protected restaurant who encounters trouble along the way. Bren Foster has a dynamic physical presence, while Seagal essentially plays an amoral but principled criminal who expects, deserves, and gives respect. Ultimately, at fadeout, he realizes the error of his ways and reforms himself. You don’t often see Seagal play a character who makes mistakes.  Ving Rhames makes a menacing antagonist who challenges our hero and tries to take over his empire by force. The Spartan combat sequences are helmed with skill. The typical Steven Seagal fan should enjoy the experience of watching "Force of Execution." Waxman doesn't let the film wear out its welcome. This 99 minute melodrama doesn’t rank as top-notch Seagal, but those minutes won’t feel like they were stolen from you.

FILM REVIEW OF "RED TAILS" (2012)

Anybody who has seen enough World War II movies knows that Hollywood has to resort to elaborate artifice to conjure up equipment which no longer exists in vast quantities. Each year attrition depletes the number of Allied planes, tanks, and war ships used in combat. Worse, most of the Axis equipment has been destroyed. The Spanish Air Force furnished the filmmakers of “Battle of Britain” (1969) with scores of vintage Nazi-era aircraft. Most moviemakers aren’t that fortunate. Now, every time that you see a World War II relic fly, you wonder if they haven’t matted in additional models, or relied entirely on miniatures. Virtually no World War II movie since the 1950s has used a Sherman tank. They rely on either the Pentagon for Cold War era equipment or mock up something that resembles a Sherman.

Freshman director Anthony Hemingway’s aerial epic “Red Tails” (** out of ****) qualifies more as a showcase for the digital computer generated imagery which can forge greater authenticity than a salute to the famous Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group. This is the kind of movie that gives history a bad name. Clocking in at a torturous 125 minutes, “Red Tails” shows flair when it’s in the air but crashes and burns on the ground. The biggest stars in its gallery—Terence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr.,--ride desks, while a flock of relative newcomers wing it. Of course, any movie that involves historical racism in our enlightened era has to fly in circles. For the record, “Three Kings” scenarist John Ridley and “The Boondocks” scribe Aaron McGruder deploy the dreaded N-word once and then fall back on clichés as creaky as a period World War II combat actioneer. Worse, they make the Tuskegee Airmen behave like stock characters. Occasionally, Hemingway and his writers go off on tangents which weren’t necessary, such as a “Great Escape” subplot. Indeed, most of what happens here is a predictable as any second-rate war film. Essentially, “Red Tails” is “Gettysburg” with wings. Nevertheless, whenever they show the aircraft and the settings, you have to admire the extraordinary CGI that producer George Lucas’ special effects outfit, Industrial Light and Magic, has wrought. Now, if they’d only made the melodrama look as genuine as the aircraft and other equipment. Mind you, the train that gets blown up looks terrific!

“Red Tails” opens in Italy in 1944 as the black aviators, who prefer to be called ‘Negros’ rather than ‘coloreds,’ are flying antiquated P-40 Tomahawks on behind the lines missions. The Pentagon doesn’t believe that African-Americans are courageous enough for the task at hand. In fact, the film quotes a racist excerpt from 1925 Army War College study that said blacks were not brainy enough, ambitious enough, or audacious enough to survive in combat. Consequently, our heroes fly custodial missions, literally mopping up what the Army has bypassed on the way to the front. If these guys are lucky, they get to shoot up a Nazi truck, and these fellows are itching to see some real action. Indeed, one of the pilots, reckless Lieutenant Joe 'Lightning' Little (David Oyelowo of “The Help”), disobeys his squadron leader, Captain Marty 'Easy' Julian (Nate Parker of “Pride”), when they strafe a Nazi transport train. Everybody else swoops in from the rear and riddles the train while the Germans gunners unleash a barrage of flak. Miraculously, nobody is wounded. Lightning decides to attack the train from the front, however, before it can enter the safety of a tunnel, and he blasts it to hell and gone. Watching the locomotive and freight cars buckle and explode makes you think that “Red Tails” is going to be a fiery ride.

Unfortunately, nothing really happens until the second hour when the Tuskegee Airmen join the fighting over Northern Europe. Interestingly enough, it seems that the white American fighter pilots who fly escort for the B-17 bombers on raids have a tendency to abandon them when they spot German fighters. What the American fighter pilots fail to recognize is the wily Germans are luring them off when the bulk of their fighters shoot the bombers to ribbons. USAAF Major General Luntz (Gerald McRaney of CBS-TV’s “Simon & Simon”) asks Colonel A.J. Bullard (Terence Howard of “Iron Man”) about using his men to fly escort. Primarily, Luntz wants them to protect his heavy bombers rather than leave them in an aerial lurch. When Luntz promises that he will put the Tuskegee Airmen into brand, spanking-new P-51 Mustangs, Bullard takes him up on it. Initially, the white American bomber pilots don’t have much faith when they see their first black pilot fly alongside them. Things change drastically when the Tuskegee guys stick to them and thwart the Germans.

Sadly, “Red Tails” seems designed for kids rather than armchair historians who have cut their teeth on History Channel documentaries. The subplots about an African-American pilot who wines and dines an Italian babe, while another struggles with his alcoholism are the embarrassing fluff of a soap opera. Mind you, these are dullest bunch of guys in uniform that you’ve ever seen. Not one single character stands out, and the Tuskegee Airmen were pretty outstanding individuals. Despite its glossy $58 million budget, “Red Tails” doesn’t muster the dramatic clout of the Golden Globe-nominated HBO made-for-cable movie “The Tuskegee Airman” (1995) with Laurence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding, Jr. Moreover, Terence Blanchard’s orchestral theme music keeps everything in snooze control for the duration. Not only the Tuskegee Airmen but also the audiences deserve best than “Red Tails” delivers.

FILM REVIEW OF "DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN"

African-American playwright/comedian Tyler Perry takes impersonating older black women to a whole new level in director Darren Grant's crowd-pleasing comedy "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," a riotously funny, but romantically soapy, revenge fantasy about a wife of 18 years who finds herself abandoned by her rich, philandering husband and forced to fend for herself. Like Eddie Murphy, Perry spreads himself throughout "Diary" in three separate roles. He plays a mild-mannered lawyer; a hormone-addled geezer, and his crowning glory: Madea, a wild and woolly grandma who would curl the Terminator's toe-nails. Indeed, Flip Wilson paved the way for black female impersonators back in the 1960s with his hit TV show where he popularized the character of Geraldine. Later, Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence set new standards with their side-splitting portrayals of black matriarchs respectively in "The Nutty Professor" flicks and "Big Momma's House." Whereas Murphy played an older, fatter woman fairly straight in the "Nutty Professor" farces, Lawrence played an FBI agent masquerading as an armed and dangerous big momma-type out to collar crooks. Not only does Perry let his falsetto-voiced grandma pack an automatic pistol, but also he puts her behind the wheel of a Cadillac that she drives as if it were a Bradley Assault Vehicle. When you aren't busting a gut laughing at the antics of Madea, you'll be cheering on Kimberly Elise as she matches wits with her villainous husband played by Steve Harris in a game of one-oneupmanship. Imagine the Ice-Cube ghetto comedy "Friday" criss-crossed with "Waiting to Exhale" and "Soul Food," and you'll have a fair idea what to expect from the PG-13 rated "Diary of a Mad Black Woman." The dominant theme here is forgiveness, and characters learn about the meaning of forgiveness.

Basically, "Diary" details three stories. The first concerns an elite Atlanta, Georgia, attorney Charles McCarter (Steve Harris) who kicks his wife of 18 years, Helen (Kimberly Elise of "Beloved"), out of his palatial mansion. He evicts Helen, because he feels like he isn't spending enough time with his sexy Hispanic mistress (Lisa Marcos) and the two kids that he conceived with her. When Helen refuses to go quietly, Charles turns into a Neanderthal and drags her by the hair out the door. Charles has already loaded all Helen's stuff into a U-Haul truck, and he has hired a friendly steelyard worker, Orlando (debonair Shemar Moore of "The Brothers"), to take her wherever she wants. Eventually, Helen winds up back in the ghetto at her grandma's house. Grandma Madea (Tyler Perry in drag) lets Helen stick around until she can get back on her feet. Seems Helen signed a prenup, so she isn't entitled to squat. Nevertheless, Madea brandishes her pistol and convinces Helen that she has a right to payback. "This is for every black woman who ever had a problem with a black man!" Meanwhile, in the second story, which occurs twenty minutes into "Diary," Helen falls in love with the U-Haul driver. Talk about too good to be true! This tale resembles a Harlequin romance. Orlando pleads with Helen, "I want to be your knight in shining armor." The third plot involves another attorney, Brian (Tyler Perry straight), who worries about the effect that his estranged crack-head wife, Deborah (Tamara Taylor of "Senseless"), may have on their young daughter and the fear that the child may follow in her mom's footsteps.

First-time director Darren Grant knows when to pour on the sap and splash on the slapstick. Just when "Diary" gets incredibly sticky with feel-good, religious sentiment, Grant brings on the comic relief in the form of Perry either as the outrageous Madea or as her vulgar brother Joe who saves this melodrama from sinking beneath the weight of its own treacle. Perry penned the screenplay based on a couple of black gospel stage plays that are available on video. He alternates comedy with drama so that there's nary a dull moment. Moreover, like any good scenarist, Perry tosses in a surprise or two, so that "Diary" doesn't get stuck in a rut. Kimberly Elise, who looks like an African-American Brigitte Bardot, is both sympathetic and believable as the woebegone wife who gets mad but ultimately gets even. Any woman--black, white, or any color—will savor those moments with great relish when Helen extracts her pound of flesh from her arrogant spouse. Despite the inherently contrived quality of the material, which consists of tried-and-true clichés and conventions, the first-class cast makes us believe in the storybook romantic as much as the unusual about-face changes in behavior that other characters make. While it may sound like Grant and Perry are out to bash men, this is far from true. They balance the negative with the positive, then provide insight the like of which rarely appears in most mainstream Hollywood movies, because it would seem artificial. Although aimed primarily at African-American audiences, "Diary of a Mad Black Women" deals in truths about the human condition that know no color barrier and will tickle any funny bone.

FILM REVIEW OF "SHAFT" (1971)

The NAACP gave up trying to persuade Hollywood to cast more African-Americans in films and television shows in 1963 and resorted to legal measures and economic sanctions. Consequently, blacks began to appear in both major and minor roles in greater numbers. Actor Sidney Poitier emerged in the late 1960s as the first truly popular African-American actor and qualified as an example of "the model
integrationist hero." By the 1970s, African-Americans had turned up not only in ghetto-themed movies but also every other film genre and television show. Meanwhile, the discrimination that black actresses encountered simply mirrored the shortage of roles white actresses had contended with in Hollywood since time immemorial. Former Cleveland Browns football star Jim Brown rose to prominence in the wake of Sidney
Poitier as the new African-American hero. Poitier and Brown served as precursors for Blaxploitation.

Eventually, the pendulum swung from one extreme with the racist depiction of blacks as subservient Sambo characters before the 1960s to the newest extreme with blacks portrayed as Superspades in what later constituted a cinematic phenomenon called Blaxploitation. Essentially, the golden age of Blaxploitation movies occurred between 1970 and 1975 and these movie targeted primarily black audiences. Blaxploitation heroes and heroines displayed a social and political consciousness, and they were not confined to single roles. They were cast as private eyes,
policemen, vigilantes, troubleshooters, pimps, etc. In each instance, these characters worked within the system, but they did so as they saw fit and sought to improve the African-American community. Not surprisingly, blaxploitation heroes often clashed with whites, but they refused to depict whites in strictly monolithic terms. Good whites and bad whites jockeyed for prominence in the films. Although one NAACP official described blaxploitation as just "another form of cultural genocide," African-American audiences flocked to see them. Blaxploitation movies knew no boundaries and encompassed comedies, musicals, westerns, coming-of-age dramas, slave plantation films, and horror movies.

Director Ossie Davis' urban crime thriller "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1970), about two African-American N.Y.P.D. cops, Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge), based on the Chester Himes novel, paved the way for the movement. When the film premiered, critics did not categorize Cotton as blaxploitation. Interestingly, the term "black exploitation" first appeared in print in the August 16, 1972, issue of the show business newspaper "Variety" when the NAACP Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch president, Junius Griffin, coined the term in a speech about the derogatory impact of the genre on African-Americans. Later, black exploitation was abbreviated as blaxploitation. The two films that historians have classified as "germinal" were independent filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles' "Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (1971) and mainstream director Gordon Parks' "Shaft" (1971). Peebles's film supplemented the content of Davis' film with sex and violence, and Sweetback's success with black audiences triggered the blaxploitation craze, one of the most profitable in cinematic history. Major Hollywood film studios rushed similar films into production. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer followed Sweetback's
success with their private eye thriller "Shaft" (1971) starring model-turned-actor Richard Roundtree as the equivalent of Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade gumshoe character in "The Maltese Falcon." Some critics complained that movies like Shaft simply substituted blacks in roles that were traditionally played by whites. Initially, MGM thought about of rewriting the African-American lead in Shaft, based on Ernst
Tidyman's novel as a Caucasian.

As a detective movie, Shaft observed all the conventions of the genre. The action opens with the trench coat-clad protagonist wearing out shoe leather in Manhattan to the tune of Isaac Hayes' iconic, Oscar-winning theme music. The lyrics provide a thumbnail sketch of the hero's persona. Private detective John Shaft lives up to those lyrics as "the cat who won't cop out when there's danger all about." At this point in the action, Shaft makes his rounds and checks in with his people and learns that some people are looking for him. Mind you, not only are some hoods looking for our protagonist, but also the N.Y.P.D., in the person of Lieutenant Vic Androzzi, is looking for Shaft. Androzzi has been hearing some bad things and wants to check up with Shaft of what's happening. Meanwtime,an infamous Harlem crime lord, Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn), loosely based on real-life criminal Bumpy Johnson, hires Shaft to locate his missing daughter Marcy. Shaft goes out looking for an old friend who has gotten into the revolution frame of mind, Ben Buford and he finds him at Amsterdam, 710. The villains stage a raid on Ben's building and only Shaft and Ben survive a massacre. Eventually, Shaft discovers that the Italian mafia has abducted her and he assembles a motley crew of black militants called The La Mumbas to help him rescue Marcy. Ben Buford (Christopher St. John of "For Love of Ivy")is the man in charge of The La Mumbas who helps Shaft out during the rescue in a blazing, shoot'em up finale in the last scene. Shaft and Buford have a face-to-face confrontation when the latter accuses the former of being a "Judas." The success of Shaft spawned two sequels "Shaft's Big Score" (1972) and "Shaft in Africa" (1973) and later a short-lived television series. Many blaxploitation movies gained notoriety for negative portrayals of African-Americans trapped in the ghettos that resorted to crime and
vice to triumph over their hostile surroundings and oppressive white
landlords.

FILM REVIEW OF "BLAZING SADDLES" (1974)

"The Producers" director Mel Brooks took the traditional white Hollywood western down an entirely different trail with this audacious 93-minute slapstick horse opera. "Blazing Saddles" (**** out of ****) stands every convention and cliché in the corral on their respective heads and then gives the genre a boot in the butt. Were you to start watching this western satire and not realize that it was a crude, rude, lowbrow comedy with lots of one-liners, vaudeville routines, campy shticks, sight gags, dopey imitations and comic anachronisms, you might either be appalled or outraged by the intolerance toward African-Americans, minorities in general, and homosexuality. Indeed, when "Blazing Saddles" came out in 1974, during the heyday of blaxploitation cinema--you know "Shaft" and "Super Fly"--use of the derogatory epithet N-word still wasn't considered as politically insensitive as in our current multi-cultural society. Moreover, the epithet "faggot" was used, too.

Brooks has said that his lowest common denominator western spoof "truly broke ground, and it broke wind." Mind you, the administrative suits at the studios cringed at the racial degradations as well as the wind-breaking campfire scene where cowboy consume copious quantities of baked beans and break wind. One studio executive wanted Brooks to eliminate this scene and the scene where Alex Karras knocks the horse down, but Brooks refused. Initially, even Brooks had some misgivings about the campfire scene and approach studio executive John Calley who advised him to ‘ring the bell.’ The campfire scene didn’t alienate audiences, and "Blazing Saddles" emerged as one of the top cinematic box office hits of 1974. Basically, a quintet of scribes, including Brooks and future comic superstar Richard Pryor, appropriate the empire building plot about the evil railroad out to destroy a town in its way. The railroad runs into quicksand and their nefarious boss Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman of “The April Fools”) decides to destroy the town of Rock Ridge to obtain the right-of-way without paying a dime. Hedley dreams up a surefire scheme, “If I could find a sheriff who so offends the citizens of Rock Ridge that his very appearance would drive them out of town.” He persuades the incredulous Governor William J. Lepetomane (Mel Brooks) to appoint an African-American railroad laborer Bart (Cleavon Little of “Vanishing Point”) as an all white town’s new sheriff. Brooks and company couldn’t have made this oater at a better time!

One of the railway laborers, Bart, gets into trouble when Taggart (Slim Pickens of “Dr. Strangelove”) dispatches him and his friend Charlie (Charles McGregor of “Super Fly”) to take a hand car down the line to investigate the presence of quicksand. Indeed, the rails have been laid in quicksand because Bart and his friend sink into the stuff. The railroad foreman pulls the hand car out of the quicksand and leaves Bart and his buddy to die. Bart climbs out of the quagmire and wraps a shovel around Taggart’s head. This insolence lands Bart in jail with a date for the executioner, until Hedley decides that he has a better use for him. Indeed, Hedley realizes that he is breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience when he comes up with his scheme. “Why am I asking you?” He turns away from the camera and heads off to see Governor Lepetomane. As upset as Lepetomane is about Bart becoming the new sheriff of Rock Ridge, Hedley spins the situation so that it appeals to the governor. “Yes,” he assures Lepetomane about the egalitarian message it will send to one and all about his liberality, “the first man ever to appoint a black sheriff.” Of course, Lepetomane believes that he can only reap the worst of a bad situation. Hedley struggles to convince him that Lepetomane will win a place in history alongside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln with his appointment of Bart as the Rock Ridge lawman.

A pimped-out looking Bart dressed in a leather outfit rides a horse with Gucci saddle bags. He rides by Count Basie and his orchestra on the plains as he heads to Rock Ridge. Meanwhile, the dutiful citizens of Rock Ridge have prepared a reception for the arrival of their new sheriff. No, they do not know that he is black. Gabby Johnson (Jack Starrett of “Kid Blue”), a send-up of perennial western character actor Gabby Hayes, spots Bart riding into town and tries to warn his fellow citizens that Bart is an African-American. A bell cuts Gabby off every time that he says the N-word, and everybody believes Gabby is saying, “The sheriff is near.” The townspeople are appalled when they see Bart. Bart ascends the platform and states, “By the power invested in me by the honorable William J. Lepetomane, I hereby assume the duties of the office of sheriff in and for the township of Rock Ridge.” Not surprisingly, everybody pulls a gun on Bart and Bart imitates them by pulling his own gun on himself. The whites put down this revolvers and Bart admires his talent. Later, at a town meeting, the citizens complain about Bart. Harriett Johnson (Carol Arthur of “Making It”) sums up the sentiments of everybody, “The white, God-fearing citizens of Rock Ridge wish to express our extreme displeasure with your choice of sheriff. Please remove him immediately!”

Indeed, the only friend that Bart has in Rock Ridge is a prisoner hanging upside down his jail cell. Jim (Gene Wilder of “Bonnie and Clyde”) surprises Bart when he identifies himself as ‘the Waco Kid.’ “He had the fastest hands in the west,” an incredulous Bart observes. Jim adds, “. . . the world.” Jim demonstrates his swift hands when he grabs a chess piece off the board before Bart can snatch it. “Well, it got so that every piss-ant prairie punk who thought he could shoot a gun would ride into town to try out the Waco Kid. I must have killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille. It got pretty gritty. I started to hear the word "draw" in my sleep. Then one day, I was just walking down the street when I heard a voice behind me say, "Reach for it, mister!" I spun around... and there I was, face-to-face with a six-year old kid. Well, I just threw my guns down and walked away. Little bastard shot me in the ass. So I limped to the nearest saloon, crawled inside a whiskey bottle, and I've been there ever since.” Jim gazes at Bart and inquires, “What’s a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?” Bart explains that his family came west as part of a wagon train. They encountered a Jewish Indian chief (Mel Brooks) and the Native Americans allowed them to settle because they were darker.

Taggart suggests that Hedley send Mongo (Alex Karras) to Rock Ridge to kill Sheriff Bart. Mongo rides into Rock Ridge on a bull, but he doesn’t stay out of jail long. “You can’t shoot him,” Jim warns Bart. “You’ll only make him mad.” Bart dresses up like a delivery boy and hands Mongo a candy gram that blows up in the big guy’s face. The next time that we see Mongo, he is tried up to the barred doors of the jail cell. Miraculously, Bart’s sneaky way of trapping Mongo impresses the strong man so much that he becomes Bart’s friend. Mongo points out that Bart is the only man who has ever whipped him. Eventually, Bart and Jim learn the truth about Hedley Lamarr and the railroad when they question Mongo. All Mongo will admit is that he is “only pawn in the game of life.” Meantime, Hedley decides to send in the voluptuous Lili Von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn of “High Anxiety”) to seduce Bart and lead him to his demise. Lili is the epitome of the female vamp. She invites Bart back stage to visit her in her dressing room after her big number. She sidles up to Bart and inquires if it is true what they say about African-American men. The next morning finds Lili fallen under Bart’s spell. She cannot live without him and behaves hysterically when he leaves. “What a nice guy,” she oozes. Hedley has one last idea. He tells Taggart: “I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.” Our heroes—Bart and Jim—knock out a couple of Ku Klux Klanners and masquerade as them.

Just when everything seems lost, Bart proposes a plan to save Rock Ridge. When the townspeople refuse to listen to him, he observes, “You’d do it for Randolph Scott.” They let Bart speak and Bart’s plan is to build a replica of Rock Ridge that Taggart and his army of desperados can burn down. This is exactly what the townspeople and the railroad workers get together and construct. They build a false-fronted town like Rock Ridge. Jim and Bart slow down the approach gunmen by setting up a toll booth. When Taggart and his men storm into the fake Rock Ridge, they are almost fooled until Taggart kicks down a building that turns out to be a false front. A huge donnybrook erupts in town and suddenly Brooks drops any pretense to realism and we find ourselves on the Warner Brothers backlot. Hedley tries to escape from Bart and Jim and momentarily takes refuge in a movie theater. At the same time, the fight on the western set spills over to another set when Buddy Bizarre (Dom DeLuise of “The End”) is having trouble orchestrating a huge dance number with men dressed up in top hats and tails. The cowboys and the homosexuals tie into each other with hilarious results. Eventually, Bart tracks down Hedley in modern day Hollywood and guns the chief villain dead. Sheriff Bart bids everybody farewell, “Keep the faith, brothers,” and rides off with Jim. They pause at one point and dismount to climb into an El Dorado Cadillac and cruise away.

Incongruity generates the best comedy and Brooks directs “Blazing Saddles” like a profane situation comedy. The idea of a black sheriff sent to save a white western town is a stroke of genius. The Waco Kid is a parody of every reformed gunfighter and the joke is that he is so fast that you never see his guns leave his holsters. Gene Wilder is a revelation as Waco. The biggest surprise occurs near the end when a fleeing Hedley winds up on the set of a movie musical with queer guys galore struggling to perform a dance number. Alex Karras is hilarious as Mongo, a thug who knocks a horse down with his fist.

FILM REVIEW OF "COTTON COMES TO HARLEM" (1970)

Not only did “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (***1/2 OUT OF ****) mark the directorial debut of actor & writer Ossie Davis, but also this pre-blaxploitation epic introduced audiences to a couple of tough-talking, incorruptible New York Police Detectives nicknamed ‘Gravedigger’ Jones (Godfrey Cambridge of “Watermelon Man”) and ‘Coffin Ed’ Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques of “Cool Breeze”) who suspect that a charismatic religious figure may be swindling his own poor people. Technically, since the term “blaxploitation” didn't enter the lexicon until 1972, this movie poised itself on the cutting edge before the edge starting cutting with films such as the “Shaft” franchise, “Superfly,” and “Slaughter” movies. The chief difference between “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and a standard-issue, formulaic white crime thriller is the protagonists are African-American. The slang is predominantly African-American, but other minorities participate in the action, primarily the Italian mafia. The protagonists are the usual iconoclasts who have alienated themselves from higher authority with their abrasive behavior. Predictably, about three-quarters of the way into the action, a superior officer removes them from the case, largely because he feels that they are acting out of prejudice against one of their own people. Early, the same police captain had complained bitterly that Gravedigger and Coffin Ed have smart mouths, are quick with their fists, and too fast with their guns. Clearly, as far as the captain is concerned, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed qualify as maniacs who have no business in an investigation that is a powder keg of racial tensions. Nevertheless, their white police lieutenant defends their behavior. He explains that they have a special way of handling Harlem crime and if they suspect somebody of criminal behavior, the lieutenant defers to their judgment. Meantime, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed see their job has protecting “the Black folks from the White folks.”

Initially, when we first see the Reverend Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart of “Dark of the Sun”), he is riding in a Rolls Royce, cruising through gritty Harlem streets to a rally for his "Back To Africa" campaign. A gold-colored armored car with the black silhouette cut-out of a luxury liner displayed prominently on its roof follows. Rev. Deke refers to this ship as ‘Black Beauty.’ He is selling tickets for it at a $100 minimum to take African-Americans back to Africa, away from the white man and his rats and poverty. Although the white establishment supports Deke, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed believe Deke is swindling poor blacks out of their hard earned dollars. During the rally, Deke explains that God anointed him while he was in jail to build an ark and take his people back to Africa. While this self-proclaimed Noah assures blacks he can provide them with a better way of life away from racist white America, masked thugs in orange suits armed with submachine gun shoot up the gathering and rifle the safe in Deke’s gold-armored truck. They kill one of Deke’s uniformed guards, John (Tony Brubaker of “Slaughter's Big Rip-Off”), and his wife Mabel watches him die. The robbers careen off in a meat truck with Deke following them and Gravedigger and Coffin Ed in hot pursuit.

During the chase, a cotton bale tumbles from the rear of the truck onto the sidewalk. The robbers strafe Gravedigger and Coffin Ed. Our heroes collide with a produce wagon transporting watermelons. Eventually, the robber’s truck and the armored car crash and burn up. Meanwhile, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed search for Deke. They visit his girlfriend, Iris (Judy Pace of “Three in the Attic”), and question her with luck about Deke’s whereabouts. While they are interrogating Iris, Sergeant Jarema (Dick Sabol of “Come Back Charleston Blue”) enters and informs them Lieutenant Anderson (Eugene Roche of “The Happening”), wants them at the scene of the accident. They order Jarema stay behind to keep an eye on Iris. Iris taunts Jarema into having sex with her. She makes him wear a brown paper bag. While he is putting on the bag, she escapes. Jarema locks himself out of her apartment, completely naked in the hallway for the other residents to see.

Captain Bryce (John Anderson of “Young Billy Young”) reprimands our heroes for suspecting that Rev. Deke O’Malley is a confidence artist. Bryce points out that the State Department and other high-prolife white groups have the highest regard for O’Malley. Later, Bryce complains to Anderson about their behavior. Deke decides to stay out of sight and conduct his own investigation. He convinces the wife of one of his dead guards to let him stay with her. Eventually, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed get Iris to inform on Deke and he goes to jail, but his attorney gets him out. Everybody is looking now for the bale of cotton that contains the stolen $87-thousand. Uncle Budd (Red Foxx of “Sanford & Son”) finds the bale and sells it for $25 to Abe Goodman. A mysterious stranger in black with a beret, Calhoun (J.D. Cannon of “Lawman”), visits Uncle Budd on his junk barge and inquires about the bale of cotton. Calhoun comes on tough until Deke’s second-in-command Barry (Teddy Wilson of “Cleopatra Jones”) confronts him and runs him off. Uncle Budd buys the cotton bale back for $30 from Goodman. Later, that night, Calhoun and his gang and Deke and his men converge on Goodman’s Junkyard. A firefight erupts and Digger is nearly struck by a truck. Nevertheless, our heroes nab Deke, haul him in for questioning, and expose him for the swindler that he is. Iris, who was found unconscious at Mabel Hill’s apartment, has told the authorities that Deke hired impostors to masquerade as the District Attorney’s Office. These impostors showed up at Deke’s rally moments before the orange jump-suit clad gunners raked the spectators with gunfire and killed John Hill.

Davis dilutes the thrills and chills of the meat truck & armored car pursuit scene with four smaller scenes within it. These four sub-scenes feature mild comedy, while the primary scene depicts a chase through the streets of New York City. The first sub-scene involves a guy trying to attract the attention of three lovely ladies strolling on the sidewalk. None ever acknowledge his existence. The second involves a hustler stealing a rack of dresses from a street vendor when the chase momentarily distracts him. The third concerns a stoned individual trying to ignite a joint. The smoker staggers into the street and miraculously neither the armored truck nor the police cruiser collide with him. This gag resembles the physical comedy that Buster Keaton practiced in silent movies. The fourth gag involves a street artist painting an expressionist portrait of a gullible Christian woman while the pickpocket Early Riser wields a pair of scissors to cut through her skirt to steal the purse that she is clutching between her legs. These four sub-scenes feature mild comedy, while the primary scene depicts a straight-forward chase through the streets of New York City that ends with the pickpocket being struck and killed. During the chase, the gunmen in the meat truck riddle the unmarked police car, shatter its window into shards, blow out its headlights, and obliterate the outside rearview mirrors. Oops, the driver’s outside rear view reappears after bullets have torn it off the door when our heroes crash into a watermelon wagon.

Geoffrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques make a believable pair of cops who interact as if they have known each other for a long time. As Coffin Ed, St. Jacques is the hard-nosed detective of the two with a short fuse who prefers to get physical with suspects, meaning pummel them with his knuckled up fists. During a confrontation with a black street vigilante gang, our heroes are compared to monsters. The beret wearing, tan-uniform clad brothers refer to Gravedigger as 'King Kong' and Coffin Ed as 'Frankenstein.' As the villain, Calvin Lockhart gives a dynamic performance and makes a serviceable villain.

Director Ossie Davis and television scribe Arnold Pearl penned the screenplay from Chester Himes’ novel. Some of the dialogue is very sharp as are the blaxploitation slogans: “Keep it black till I get back.” “Is that black enough for you?” Several messages pervade this above-average crime thriller about the search for stolen loot. First, the meek shall inherit the Earth. Second, crime doesn’t pay and criminals have to pay to ply their criminal vocation. Harlem blacks should control Harlem, not the Italian mafia. Our heroes force the Italian mafia to turn over their Harlem operation to a Black racketeer. Black women can outsmart white men. One black woman is depicted as a ‘stone fox,’ and she makes a buffoon of a cretinous white police sergeant. The interesting question that arises but is never resolved—and by extension gives “Cotton Comes to Harlem” a surreal quality—concerns the raw, unprocessed bale of cotton. Where did it come from and what is it doing in Harlem? Nobody ever answers this question.

FILM REVIEW OF ''DEATH AT A FUNERAL" (2010)

Everything that can possibly go wrong at a memorial service does go wrong in “Nurse Betty” director Neil LaBute’s witty but tasteless comedy “Death at a Funeral,” (**** OUT OF ****) starring Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Danny Glover, James Marsden, Tracy Morgan and Zoe Saldana. Ostensibly a faithful rehash of director Frank Oz’s British comedy with the same title, this predominately African-American remake—just three years after the original—qualifies as a side-splitting experience from fade-in to fade-out with our protagonists contending with one surprise after another to get their dearly departed dad and his mourners through the memorial. Incidentally, Peter Dinklage reprises his role from the original as “mysterious stranger.” British scenarist Dean Craig, who penned the original “Funeral,” banks on outrageous situations as well as Chris Rock’s commentary about these incidents to yield laughs galore. Essentially, Craig has relocated the action to Southern California. The primary characters consist of an oddball variety of believable, quirky, but sympathetic folks. Indeed, the cast acts virtually as an ensemble in some scenes. Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence complement each other without trying to outdo each other. James Marsden has a field day with his character-driven shenanigans, while Tracy Morgan draws some of the biggest laughs when he tangles with Danny Glover. The important thing here--as in most good comedies--is that the cast and the director don’t deliberately behave as if they were making a comedy. Nobody tries to be funny. The humor emerges in the collision between the characters and predicaments wholly beyond their control. Watching the reactions of both Rock and Lawrence constitutes half of the fun of “Death at a Funeral.”

Tax accountant Aaron Barnes (Chris Rock of “Good Hair”) is not a happy camper as “Death at a Funeral” unfolds. Imagine Aaron’s reaction when the funeral home delivers the wrong corpse to his house! When they open the casket for our protagonist, Aaron finds himself staring down at an Asian gentleman (Jamison Yang of “Surfer, Dude”) rather than his deceased father Edward (Bob Minor of "The Gingerbread Man"). Since Edward's death, Aaron’s overwrought mother, Cynthia (Loretta Divine of “Waiting to Exhale”), has been pestering both Aaron and his 37-year old wife Michelle (Regina Hall of “Scary Movie”) about giving her a grandchild to take her mind off her late husband. Moreover, Aaron finds himself struggling to compose a eulogy for his father. Tradition dictates that the oldest son must deliver it. Nevertheless, some people, such as Aaron's uncle Duncan (Ron Glass of TV’s “Barney Miller”), think Aaron’s younger brother, Ryan (Martin Lawrence of “Bad Boys”), should have drawn that assignment. As it turns out, Aaron is only nine months older than Ryan. You see, Aaron has written a book, but he has refused to let anybody read it. Meanwhile, Cynthia is so overjoyed when her celebrity son Ryan arrives that she knocks down Michelle in her haste to embrace her baby. Ryan is a bespectacled, mustached, smooth-talking womanizer. He is also a published writer so deep in debt that he doesn’t have a dime. When Aaron asks him to help out with the expensive funeral bill, Ryan refuses. Instead, Ryan sets out to seduce a sexy 18-year old girl, Martina (Regine Nehy of "Lakeview Terrace"), who sends his hormones into an uproar. The inevitable jokes about R. Kelly follow.

Meantime, Aaron's cousin Elaine (Zoe Saldana of “Avatar”) is attending the memorial service with her latest boyfriend Oscar ((James Marsden of “X-Men”), and Oscar is pretty nervous about running into Elaine’s father Duncan again. Oscar doesn’t think that Duncan approves of him. Elaine and Oscar cruise over to pick up her brother Jeffrey (Columbus Short of “Armored”), and Elaine sneaks a Valium. What Elaine doesn’t know is that Jeffrey has whipped up a hallucinogenic cocktail of mescaline and acid for his friends and stashed it in a bottle with a Valium prescription. Jeffrey doesn’t discover what Elaine has done until he notices Oscar’s bizarre behavior. At one point during the memorial service, Oscar is so confident that he has seen the coffin moving that he interrupts the preacher, Reverend Davis (Keith David of “Delta Farce”), in the middle of his sermon. A melee ensues as Aaron and company try to subdue Oscar. Predictably, the casket topples onto the floor and out rolls Edward’s inert corpse! If Oscar’s misguided shenanigans were not enough to contend with, a stranger named Frank (Peter Dinklage of “Elf”) corners Aaron with incriminating photos of Edward and he cuddling up to each other like the gay lovers that they were. Frank demands $30-thousand dollars or he will show the photos to Cynthia.

Elaine’s ex-boyfriend Derek (Luke Wilson of “Home Fries”) and long-time family friend Norman (Tracy Morgan of “Cop Out”) have to make a detour at a nursing home to collect cantankerous Uncle Russell (Danny Glover of “Lethal Weapon”) and bring him with them. The wheel chair bound Uncle Russell doesn’t give Norman a moment’s peace. Derek is hoping that he can patch things up with Elaine, and he does his best to change her mind about him. On the other hand, everything that Norman does for Uncle Russell draws criticism from the oldster. Things get really out of hand when Norman has to assist Uncle Russell to the toilet and Norman’s hand gets trapped under Uncle Russell. Mind you, this is only the set-up for even more hilarity that follows.

Between the wrongly delivered corpse and Uncle Russell’s antics, “Death at a Funeral” has enough high-jinks to keep you chuckling out loud. Dull moments are few and far between, and this superficial but funny Paramount Pictures gagfest never loses track with its objective: making us laugh. The refreshing thing about “Death at a Funeral” is how LaBute confines the most action to the family household without inducing a sense of claustrophobia. Anybody who enjoys Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, and Tracy Morgan will have a rollicking good time at this contagiously funny, but dark comedy about mortality and the secrets that death exposes about an individual.

FILM REVIEW OF ''I CAN DO BAD ALL BY MYSELF" (2009)

As entertaining as the latest Madea comedy is, writer & director Tyler Perry’s seventh movie “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” (*** out of ****) doesn’t generate half as much humor and heartache as earlier Madea entries. No, “I Can Do Bad” doesn’t top “Madea Goes to Jail.” First, not only does everybody’s favorite pistol-packing grandmother Maybelle "Madea" Simmons not pack a pistol, but she also spends more time off screen. In other words, she doesn’t break the law and end up either in court or jail. She qualifies more as a supporting character used for comic relief. Second, “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” boasts no surprises. Indeed, most of this sermonizing melodrama about seeking redemption from Jesus focuses on the trials and tribulations of a liquor-swilling lounge warbler who finds her life suddenly turned topsy-turvy when her three motherless niece and nephews as well as a Latino immigrant take up residence in her townhouse.

No, despite its inspirational message, “I Can Do Bad” probably isn’t designed entirely for Sunday night churchgoers, though there are several religious-themed songs sung. The theme of child abuse rears its ugly head about three-fourths of the way through this 113 minute epic while the heroine wallows in an adulterous affair with another wife’s husband. Usually, if you can figure out a movie before the characters figure out what is happening, the movie isn’t as imaginative. Perry counteracts the wholesale predictability of “I Can Do Bad” with a charismatic cast, including Taraji P. Henson, Gladys Knight, Adam Rodriguez, Brian White, and Marvin L. Winans.

“I Can Do Bad” gets off on the right foot. Madea (Tyler Perry in a dual cross-dressing role) awakens to the noise of burglars in her house, but she cannot rouse Joe (Tyler Perry) to check out the disturbance. Madea catches Jennifer (Hope Olaide Wilson), Manny (Kwesi Boakye) and Byron (Freddy Siglar) in the act of stealing Joe’s VCR so they can see it for food. Madea and Joe sit this terrible threesome down for a meal and try to pry out of them information about who is responsible for them. Jennifer tries to act tough, but Madea acts tougher. “Honey,” she informs the teenage girl, “I been to jail. I will shank you.” Afterward, Madea goes to work on her two younger brothers who confess that their guardian has been gone for several days. Eventually, Madea learns that they are relatives of April (Taraji P. Henson of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) who sings in a local nightclub. When Madea shows up at April’s front door, the grouchy singer isn’t happy to see them. Typically, April sleeps off her alcoholic binges until the late afternoon with another woman’s husband Randy (Brian White of “12 Rounds”) who cannot stand his own three munchkins and a forthcoming one, too. Basically, Randy manages to foot the bills for both households, but he sleeps with April for obvious reasons.

Tanya (Mary J. Blige of “Prison Song”), who employs April to sing, breaks down and chides her about her selfishness and her alcoholism. April ignores Tanya and keeps on drinking. When matriarchal Madea comes banging on April’s door with the children, April explains that they belong to her sister. April’s sister died from crack abuse, and April’s long-suffering mother now cares for the trio. Nobody knows where April’s mom is until Pastor Brian (gospel star Marvin L. Winans of “Mama, I Want to Sing”) and churchgoing songster Wilma (Gladys Knight of “Hollywood Homicide”) investigate and visit April about 45 minutes into the plot with the tragic news. April’s mother, it seems, climbed aboard a city bus to go to work and died from an aneurism in route. Everybody, including the bus driver, thought that she was sleeping.

Initially, April wants nothing to do with her niece and nephews, but Jennifer is caught shoplifting at a corner drugstore. Byron, it seems, suffers from diabetes and Jennifer knows how to handle it. Of course, Randy is dead set against the kids moving in with April, but teenage Jennifer catches his gimlet eye. Meanwhile, a virile Columbian immigrant who works as a handyman, Sandino (Adam Rodriguez of CBS-TV’s “C.S.I.: Miami”), shows up at Pastor Brian’s Zion Liberty Baptist Church looking for work. Pastor Brian promises to pay him for some church repairs and then sends him over to work out his rent in April’s house. April and Sandino don’t get off on the right foot and Randy doesn’t like him period. She allots space for Sandino in her basement. Meantime, April pawns her relatives off on Madea to repay her for their depredations in her house. Pastor Brian, Wilma, Tanya, and even Sandino go to work on the callous April. When she sees the life of sin that she has been living, the self-destructive singer converts and follows Madea’s advice: "If you give some good things to people, good things come back to you--most of the time."

The themes of juvenile delinquency, selfishness, self-sacrifice, and ego are hammered home through songs and sermons both that often belabor the point and rob it of any shred of subtlety. Henson really shines as the protagonist who sees the light and changes her behavior and Rodriguez emerges as her knight-in-shining armor. Brian White makes a strong impression as the cheating husband. Nevertheless, Madea still trumps them all with her warped sense of humor. The best scene in “I Can Do Bad” has Madea regaling Jennifer with her side-splitting story about Jonah and the whale. “That’s when Noah showed up, with his arch, the St. Louis arch.” It is a tribute to Perry’s skill as a filmmaker and the charisma of his sturdy cast that together they can make you sniffle, sob, and cry aloud at the drop of every cliché in “I Can Do Bad.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''NEXT DAY AIR'' (2009)

Lurking beneath the surface of former gangsta rap video music director Benny Boom’s derivative African-American crime comedy “Next Day Air” (** out of ****) lies the not-so-subtle message that pedaling narcotics is a perilous occupation. This predictable, R-rated, 84-minute, “Pineapple Express” carbon copy about minority drug dealers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, blasting holes in each other over a lost horde of cocaine generates more bloodshed than buffoonery. Ironically, first-time scenarist Blair Cobbs has penned a melodramatic screenplay that casts its largely black and Hispanic actors in despicably stereotypical drug dealer roles.

Nobody in “Next Day Air” deserves a shred of sympathy except the protagonist’s mother. She is literally the only character that isn’t up to mischief. Worse, the producers have squandered the talents of one of the funniest black comedians alive—Mos Def—in a role so trifling that it qualifies as a cameo. Although she has been as criminally wasted in a similar minor role, it is gratifying to see Debbie Allen of “Fame” back in a big-screen film. Furthermore, funnyman Mike Epps usually makes even the worst comedy tolerably entertaining, but his presence does little to enliven “Next Day Air.”

Director Benny Boom and scenarist Blair Cobbs establish in the first ten minutes of “Next Day Air” that the misguided protagonist, Leo Jackson (Donald Faison of TV’s “Scrubs”), loves to get high on reefer. His mother, Ms. Jackson (Debbie Allen of “Fame”), calls her spoiled son on the carpet for his marijuana misadventures and threatens to fire him. Leo goes into a tantrum and pleads with her not to pink slip him. Nevertheless, the threat of being fired has little impact on him afterward because he is back to puffing pot on his delivery route in no time flat.

Meanwhile, a trio of cretinous bank robbers, Guch (Wood Harris of HBO’s “The Wire”), Brody (Mike Epps of “Resident Evil: Extinction”) and Hassie (Malik Barnhardt of “Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club”), sits around their dumpy apartment and play video games. Actually, Guch and Brody do the sitting while an oblivious Hassie sprawls out on a nearby couch. The filmmakers appeared to have modeled Hassie on the Brad Pitt slacker in “True Romance” who hung out on a sofa in his friend’s house. Recently, these low-lives attempted a bank hold-up that went hilarious awry for the silliest of excuses. Apparently, Guch told Brody to grab the loot after they entered the premises. Instead, Brody seized the video surveillance tapes. Now, they watch the bank tapes and reprimand Brody for his incompetence.

Guch and Brody reside in the same Philadelphia apartment complex near a Puerto Rican couple, Jesus (Cisco Reyes) and Chita (Yasmin Deliz), who are anxiously awaiting a shipment of ten bricks of cocaine from a Los Angeles-based, cigar-smoking drug smuggler, Bodega (Emilio Rivera), an hombre with no sense of humor. Boom and Cobbs show what happens to the thugs who try to take advantage of Bodega, and it isn’t a pretty sight. After Bodega punishes a hood from misconduct, he promotes Jesus to replace the dearly departed, and Jesus knows that his life isn’t worth a dime if anything untoward goes wrong through no fault of his own.

Naturally, Leo is getting high when he wheels in a giant box to the apartment complex and delivers it to Guch and Brody. Brody cannot believe his eyes, while Guch insists that God has answered their prayers. Brody contacts his drug pedaling cousin, Shavoo (Omari Hardwick of “Gridiron Gang”), and makes him a sales pitch. Initially, Shavoo doesn’t snap up Brody’s offer because he keeps a stash in a rental unit downtown, until he learns that somebody has stolen his narcotics from him. Shavoo decides to accommodate Brody, but he is suspicious about everybody since the burglars hit his rental unit. Meantime, Jesus phones Bodega and reports that the merchandise hasn’t arrived. Instantly, Bodega grows suspicious because he contacted Ms. Jackson’s company Next Day Air and received confirmation that the package arrived safely at its destination.

Bodega flies into Philly with his hard-faced henchman Rhino (Lobo Sebastian of “The Longest Yard”) who likes to get sadistic with Bodega’s enemies. Along with Bodega and Rhino, a desperate Jesus (Cisco Reyes) and Chita (Yasmin Deliz) set out to find Leo and clear up everything. They catch up with Leo, still inhaling pot even when he drives his delivery van and Leo realizes to his horror that he did in fact deliver the package to the wrong address. At this point, pandemonium erupts out as everybody converges on Guch’s apartment with guns drawn and itching to shoot first and ask questions later.

The best thing about “Next Day Air” is that director Boom doesn’t wear out his welcome. This movie clocks in at less than 90 minutes. On the other hand, this dud about a bunch of dimwits isn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute marathon. The finale consists of a hardcore, Quentin Tarantino-type gun battle at close quarters. Boom stages this uneven comedy as if he were aspiring to be a Guy Ritchie of “Snatch” fame. Unfortunately, the gunfire overshadows the guffaws. Next Day Air” has absolutely nothing to redeem it, and this Summit Entertainment release scrapes the bottom of the barrel for the modicum of humor that it has.

FILM REVIEW OF ''HOODLUM'' (1997)

Snap-brim fedoras, vintage autos, blazing Tommy guns, corrupt public officials and greedy mobsters battling it out over turf rights recur throughout director Bill Duke’s violent, 1930s’ racketeering epic “Hoodlum” (**1/2 out of ****) a pictorially authentic actioneer that evokes memories of the classic Robert Stack television series “The Untouchables.” Although “Hoodlum” boasts a top-drawer cast, including Laurence Fishburne, Vanessa Williams, Tim Roth, and Andy Garcia, this lavishly mounted but uneven gangster saga suffers from its rambling length, garrulous script and a shortage of shoot-outs. As the first major film to headline the crimes of Harlem’s infamous Black Godfather Ellsworth ‘Bumpy’ Johnson, this production offers a novel departure for audiences that are weary of superheroes, female warriors and hard-bitten cops who have were crowding the big-screen when “Hoodlum” appeared in 1997.

The Chris Brancato screenplay introduces Bumpy in 1934 as he exits Sing Sing Prison. Duke and Brancato exert great pains to differentiate Bumpy from the typical African-American mobster. He peruses books, plays chess, and pens poetry. As literate as Bumpy is, he can pull a trigger or wield a knife without a pang of remorse when somebody threatens a person who he loves. Like “The Godfather II” and “Once Upon A Time in America,” “Hoodlum” charts the rise of the Godfather of Harlem in a ruthless game of survival that claims his best friend Illinois Gordon (Chi McBride of “I, Robot”) and leaves Bumpy forever altered by the gory experience. Ostensibly, you won’t see anything in “Hoodlum” that you haven’t seen in dozens of other crime films. “Hoodlum” features notorious real-life racketeers such as Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth of “Pulp Fiction”) and Lucky Luciano (Andy Garcia of “Godfather III”) as well as corrupt special prosecutor Thomas Dewey (William Atherton of “The Sugarland Express). When Bumpy arrives in Harlem, he watches a numbers runner working for Madam Stephanie St. Clair (Cicely Tyson) who is the so-called ‘Queen of the Numbers.’ The Dutchman craves to absorb the territory that the Madam has struggled for a decade to build into the number one home-grown Harlem business. Bumpy vows to prevent any takeover by the Irish mob.

Meanwhile, the boorish, grubby, low-life Schultz refuses to appease Lucky or Bumpy. Along the way, Bumpy falls in love with righteous Francine (Vanessa Williams) who wants him to find respectable work. Bumpy refuses to stoop to menial employment. When Dutch cannot kill the Madam, he bribes a judge to send her to the pen. Bumpy supervises the Madam’s empire at her request during her absence. Bumpy’s bloodthirsty methods clash with her live-and-let-live notions. Eventually, Luciano and Bumpy strike a deal, and Dutch finds himself out in the cold. Suddenly, gangster gunfire chops down a young, innocent numbers runner. Now, Bumpy’s cronies think that he has gone too far. Francine bails out on him more out of the formulaic dictates of the story than for any motivated reason. So do the filmmakers. The second half of the movie shows Bumpy losing favor with everybody.

The film’s publicity notes claim that “Hoodlum” is complete fiction, but historical characters populate the story. Of course, movies rarely recreate history with any fidelity. History is more chaotic than dramatic, so filmmakers recast it to fit their dramatic formulas. One way is by cutting the number of characters. Refusing to portray these events as they actually occurred, Duke and Brancato blow a fantastic opportunity to exploit their melodramatic potential. Duke, whose directorial credits include “Deep Cover” and “A Rage in Harlem,” wrestles with the obvious lapses in Brancato’s script. The length of “Hoodlum” may have been cut by the studio to squeeze in more showings in a single evening. The action grows and takes on an episodic quality when Bumpy becomes callous. After the first half, the film’s momentum bogs down, and “Hoodlum” loses its air of fun. The time has come for the characters to pay the piper.

The filmmakers embrace a curious morality. In most gangster movies, the hoodlum hero must die. Bumpy gets off easy, as does Luciano and only Dutch antes up with his life. Duke and Brancato allow their criminals greater leniency. The gangsters are less cancerous than the defenders of justice. Consequently, “Hoodlum” concludes on an anti-climax. Moreover, the filmmakers neglect to post an epilogue about Bumpy’s outcome. For the record, the gangster who hires Shaft to find his kidnapped daughter in “Shaft” is a variation on Bumpy” as is the kingpin mobster in “American Gangster” with Denzel Washington. The problem with Brancato’s script is its uneven quality. The action-packed first half is more entertaining than the tedious, long-winded second half. The filmmakers glorify Bumpy initially as a Robin Hood gangster who steals from a rival mob and gives to Harlem’s starving citizens.

Fishburne is riveting as a tough-as-nails but warm-hearted criminal. Roth takes top acting honors, however, as Dutch Schultz and looks like he had a ball exaggerating those vile elements in Schultz’s psychotic behavior. Garcia epitomizes sartorial urbanity as the peace-making Italian gangster who divides his time between Bumpy, Dutch, and special prosecutor Dewey. Williams brings substance and physical beauty to the role of Bumpy’s mistress, but the Brancato script jettisons her too early from the action when she finds her lover’s gunplay repellent. Atherton’s egotistical special prosecutor bristles with revulsion in his dealings with these crooks, but accepts their bribes. The filmmakers make the repressive Dewey appear particularly loathsome, a Judas whose contempt for the mob is exceeded only by his mockery of justice. Clarence Williams III has finally landed the kind of role that should banish the typecasting stigma of his 1960s “Mod Squad” character. As Schultz’s fearless right-hand henchman, Williams III breathes a cold-hearted, steely presence into his hired gun that makes him another stand-out in a stellar car.

Veteran black character actor Paul Benjamin scintillates in a minor role as a gravel-voiced gunsel named Whisper who sports a razor-slash scar across his throat. Benjamin has not appeared in a role this invigorating since he played a convict opposite Clint Eastwood in “Escape from Alcatraz. The vastly underrated actor Richard Bradford generates nothing but disgust as a corrupt police captain who takes special delight in torturing his gangster victims. Ironically, the most despicable characters that emerge from “Hoodlum” are not the criminals but the lawmen.

Despite some flavorful dialogue, “Hoodlum” plays it straight down the line as a dramatic shoot’em up. Audiences expecting a variation on Eddie Murphy’s “Harlem Nights” may leave this Fishburne film disappointed. Although it’s no “Godfather,” “Hoodlum” is definitely above-average and far beyond those quickie classics of the 1970s that headlined Fred Williamson as the black Caesar of crime in “Hell Up in Harlem.” If you enjoy gangster epics, “Hoodlum” is worth the price of admission. Some critics have savaged “Hoodlum” for its debatable morality. Indeed, Bumpy rises to the summit of his profession. At fade-out, however, Duke and Brancato show that the gangster’s life, in spite of its many frills, is one that leaves you standing alone in the rain outside the church door without a friend.

FILM REVIEW OF ''MADEA GOES TO JAIL''

They call her Mabel Simmons, but everybody knows her as Madea. This elderly but agile, six-foot-five, African-American matriarch can whip her own weight in cops. She can mangle Biblical scripture, but still make her points. Atlanta-based filmmaker Tyler Perry has now helmed three theatrical features about this short-tempered, bespectacled, gray-haired grandma who packs an automatic pistol in her purse and isn’t afraid to use it. In Perry’s latest comedy “Madea Goes to Jail” (**** out of ****), an impatient young woman in a red convertible swerves past Madea’s Cadillac as our heroine cruises through her local Big K in search of a parking space. Madea has her sights set on a space near the front doors. Before Madea can pull into it, the red convertible woman cuts her off and parks in the space. Madea harangues the woman for stealing her space. Ignoring Madea, the woman saunters off into the store. An angry Madea commandeers a nearby fork lift and hoists the woman’s convertible out of her parking space! When the shocked woman scrambles into the parking lot screaming at Madea to put her car down, Madea obliges her cheerfully. No sooner has Madea dropped the convertible than the woman uses her cell phone to call her police husband to come haul off Jemima the Hun!

Anybody who has seen “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” “Madea’s Family Reunion,” and/or “Meet the Browns” knows that writer, producer, director Tyler Perry makes people laugh harder and longer impersonating an angry black woman than Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence put together. The matronly Madea ranks as one of the most maniacal comic characters you’ll ever see, and her seismic slapstick shenanigans in “Madea Goes to Jail” register like an epic earthquake on the Richter scale. We learn at the outset that Madea has bounced checks, stolen identities, worked as a stripper to feed her family, and drives without a license. She refuses to admit that she has ever flown into a rage and she doesn’t like people touching her. Meanwhile, when Tyler isn’t playing Madea, he plays Madea’s beleaguered thirty-something attorney son Brian and Madea’s crotchety old coot of a husband Joe who smokes pot while he is hooked up to an oxygen machine. The antics of this dysfunctional family will keep you guffawing until your sides split, but Perry doesn’t make “Madea Goes to Jail” one long laugh after another. Moreover, he doesn’t utilize Madea strictly for comic relief. Indeed, he uses everybody’s favorite matriarch to make some heavyweight philosophical points.

Perry alternates between Madea’s pratfalls and the predicament of a drug-addicted young woman with a history of abuse who has been arrested for prostitution. Atlanta District Attorney Joshua Hardaway (Derek Luke of “Biker Boyz”) has the world by the coattails. Joshua has a great job, good friends, and a pampered princess of a fiancé, Assistant District Attorney Linda (Ion Overman), who boasts an 89 percent conviction rate. Joshua is about to prosecute the case against Candy (“The Cosby Show’s” Keshia Knight Pulliam) until he recognizes her as a childhood friend. Excusing himself, Joshua turns the case over to Linda. Joshua is clearly shaken by the appearance of his old friend, and he helps Candy make bail. Afterward, he introduces the defiant Candy to a tough-love minister, Ellen (Viola Davis of “Doubt”), who runs interference for prostitutes in the red light district and tries to rescue them. Candy turns her nose up to Ellen. Meanwhile, Linda isn’t happy about her new competition, especially when Joshua rescues Candy after an abusive pimp that beats her. Joshua reassures Linda that he doesn’t love Candy. Nevertheless, every time Linda turns around, Candy shows up at Joshua’s apartment. Linda tampers with the evidence in Candy’s case, and the judge sentences Candy to a 17-year stretch in prison. At the same time, Linda turns her wrath on Madea who hasn’t done a day in jail. The judge (real-life Judge Matthias) lowers the gavel on Madea. He sentences Madea to five to ten years because of the convertible incident.

When Tyler Perry isn’t making madcap Madea movies, he has been sharpening his skill with melodramas, such as “Why Did I Get Married” and “The Family That Preys,” that bristle with histrionics galore. Typically, proud villains flaunt the upper hand for the first half of these yarns. During the second half, however, the meek triumph over the proud. Half of the fun of watching “The Family That Preys,” “Why Did I Get Married,” and even “Madea Goes to Jail” is savoring the success of the meek over the proud. Perry likes to bring the bad to their knees the same way that Madea unloads that red convertible with a crash in the Big K parking lot. You’ll see more than enough of this in “Madea Goes to Jail.” The villains—especially haughty Linda—make you want to shadow box with their screen images while sympathetic individuals like Joshua make you want to embrace them. Anytime a movie can make you laugh, cry, and then laugh again, you know you’ve found something worth watching. “Madea Goes to Jail” makes you laugh, cry, and laugh again and you don’t have to be African-American to enjoy it. Perry concludes this cataclysmic comedy on a high note as Madea winds up having to attend another anger management session with Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil may never be the same after this movie. Incidentally, the theatrical version of Tyler Perry’s “Madea Goes to Jail” differs substantially from the 2006 video release “Madea Goes to Jail.” The two are alike only because they share the same title and title character. Realistically, "Madea Goes to Jail" should have been retitled "Madea Goes to Prison."

FILM REVIEW OF ''SOUL MEN'' (2008)

Samuel L. Jackson and the late comedian Bernie Mac team up as blues singers in “Undercover Brother” director Malcolm D. Lee’s new movie “Soul Men” (** out of ****), a raunchy, R-rated, musical comedy that co-stars late rhythm & blues legend Isaac Hayes. The camaraderie between the cantankerous Jackson and the comedic Mac surpasses their half-witted shenanigans as they embark on a cross-country trip to pay tribute to a dead lead singer with whom they once shared the limelight. Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone's episodic script trots out all the obligatory jokes about Viagra, rectal exams, and infidelity. Our heroes emerge from obscurity and find redemption and success where they least expected. Ironically, “Soul Men” fares better as a drama about two washed-up blues brothers struggling to make a comeback than as a comedy of errors. Although neither Jackson nor Mac can tote a tune in a bucket, they conjure up more than enough charisma to compensate for their lack of vocal talent. Basically, “Soul Men” boils down to an African-American spin on “The Sunshine Boys” meet “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” with a hefty part of the plot taking place in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Soul Men” unfolds like a VH-1 music documentary as we learn about the soul trio Marcus Hooks and the Real Deal. These fellas start out warbling on Memphis street corners and wind up in the big time. Eventually, Marcus (Johnny Legend, a.k.a. John Stephens) abandons his back-up singers, Louis Hinds (Samuel L. Jackson of “Pulp Fiction”) and Floyd Henderson (Bernie Mac of “Transformers”), to pursue a solo career. Marcus finds fame, but our heroes—the Real Deal—burn out as one-hit wonders. Creative differences drive them apart in 1979 and they go their separate ways. Floyd reaps greater monetary fame promoting an L.A. car wash with bikini-clad babes soaping up bumpers, while Louis botches a bank robbery and serves time in prison.

“Soul Men” shifts from the past to the present. Floyd finds himself put out to pasture in a luxurious retirement village by his goofy son Duane (Mike Epps of “Next Friday”) who has taken over his father’s business. Predictably, Floyd gets bored playing golf and has to gobble Viagra galore to keep up with a voluptuous neighbor who wants his body more than his soul. Floyd suffers from insomnia. One night while watching television, he learns that Marcus has died during a concert performance in Stockholm. No sooner does Floyd hear about this tragedy than record label owner Danny Epstein (Sean Hayes of “The Bucket List”) rings him up. Epstein wants Floyd and Louis to perform at Marcus’ tribute at the world famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Naturally, Floyd leaps at the offer and looks up Louis.

Louis, on the other hand, doesn’t jump at the offer. Out on parole, Louis toils as a mechanic and lives in hopeless squalor. After a tough day at the garage, Louis comes home to his depressing apartment to find Floyd rummaging through his things. Before Floyd can say something, Louis decks him with a right cross to the jaw that crumples Floyd to the floor. When he recovers, Floyd tries to reason with Louis and begs him to appear at the Apollo so that he can reboot their blues singing career. Louis flatly refuses until Floyd tells him that they can pick up an easy twenty grand. Shrewd, cynical Louis reluctantly agrees to join Floyd, but only if Floyd gives Louis sixty per cent of the split and they drive across country rather than fly.

A frustrated Floyd caves in to Louis’ demands. They hit the road in a lime-green Cadillac and do a series of one-night performances at motel lounges across Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma. Things get complicated along the way when they try to visit an old girlfriend, discover that she is dead, and meet her beautiful daughter, Cleo (Sharon Leal of “Dreamgirls”), who contends with an abusive boyfriend. Louis and Floyd rescue her from the boyfriend, Lester (Affion Crockett of “Compton Cowboy”), and she accompanies them. She finds her voice as a blues singer on the road. When our heroes chill in Memphis, local sensation Isaac Hayes offers Cleo a contract. While things soar from Cleo, everything goes south for our protagonists. Louis and Floyd get into trouble, end up in jail, and then Floyd pulls a real boner. The Memphis Police release Floyd, but they hold Louis since he has violated his parole. Floyd realizes he cannot sing solo at the Apollo, so he breaks his old partner out of jail. The surveillance camera footage makes the news. Now, our heroes are the object of a nation-wide manhunt, so when they arrive in Harlem, they have to dodge the N.Y.P.D.

Predictably, everything works out. “Soul Men” qualifies as neither a great movie nor a good movie, more like a minor movie. However, you cannot take your eyes off either Samuel L. Jackson or Bernie Mac when they do their routines. They spend most of the film’s 100 minute running time hurling hardcore expletives at each other. Depending on your sense of humor, you'll either hurt yourself laughing when they badmouth each other or you will hang your head in despair. Jackson and Mac are fun to watch, especially when they don their flashy outfits and perform choreographed dance numbers. Isaac Hayes pretty much plays himself in a subplot. Bernie Mac deserved a better film than “Soul Men” to conclude his career. Spike Lee's younger brother director Malcolm D. Lee wraps up the film with a tribute to Mac’s career.