source: Detroit 9000

Detroit 9000

Of all the blaxpoitation films I have seen, this is one of the worst. There was no real redeeming quality to this movie. The shoot em' up scenes were lame. The music was repetitive. When the movie ended I couldn't have been more happy.

Unlike many of the other movies of its ilk, Detroit 9000 has a much more serious tone. It's more akin to something like Across 110th Street than it is to Foxy Brown. As serious as it may be, there's still a lot of fun to be had – funky music, gunfights, and plenty of fake looking blood. For the most part, it's a fast faced, enjoyable, gritty look at crime in Detroit in the 70s. But the movie isn't without its problems. Chief among them is the lead detective played by Alex Rocco. I enjoy watching an actor who makes you forget they are an actor and you really start to believe in their character. No such luck with Rocco in Detroit 9000. I never bought his down-on-his-luck, good-cop routine. To me, he was nothing more than someone reciting lines. And the whole subplot about his wife in the asylum added nothing to the film other than to slow things down to a crawl.

This film comes very close to being one of the great action flicks of the Seventies, but just falls a little short. The opening scene of the heist is very well done, and the shoot-out at the end was great, but a plodding middle section hurt the overall film. A Great soundtrack helps through the occasional lulls. Fans of the black films of that era will not be disappointed.

Quinten Tarrantino is obviously a big fan of this movie as indicated by his re-releasing of said title on his Raging Thunder label and if there's one thing I really like about Tarrantino, it's his taste in films which I share wholeheartedly. Having said this, whilst not implied as an insult to the film itself, this particular blaxploitation offering can hardly be described as one of the best of its ilk; indeed it seems to plod around somewhat aimlessly for most of its running time. However, don't switch off just yet for the final third does pick up incredibly well as it ties up the threads and culminates in a tremendously fun, prolonged chase sequence backed in typical seventies style by a suitable groovy track. Final verdict: Certainly worth a look but far from the most memorable Blaxplotation flick out there.

Not your typical Blaxploitation movie. I rented it because Vonetta McGee is in it but was pleasantly surprised. You should see the top tier Blaxploitaion movies (Fred,Pam,Jim,Isaac) first to appreciate this one. Definitely a sleeper.

Blaxploitation but sophisticated blaxploitation, if you will. Right from the bat you'll notice a little deeper characterization and more intricate plot mixed in with the jive music and bloody violence and for the most part, it works well. Some of the story does bog down the pace at times but not enough to cause any major problem. Seeing that this is one of the films released under Tarantino's Rolling Thunder company, the fact that Reservoir Dogs shares a few traits with Detroit 9000 should come as no surprise. However, Detroit 9000 took a few lines of dialogue from Dirty Harry, so I guess that's just the nature of the beast.

Detroit 9000 is a lesser known and very underrated heist thriller that somewhat falls under the blaxsploitation genre. No matter how you want to classify this Detroit 9000 packs a punch to the gut. Very well acted with Alex Rocco and Hari Rhodes as a pair of cops working on a high profile case. The film is very gritty and shows political corruption, racism and a whole lot of violence with high powered shootouts ending with lots of carnage, blood and lead left in it's wake. The score by Luchi DeJesus is very cool and stylish giving it that funky 70's flavor and I think this was quite well acted and well made as a whole. Scatman Crothers appears in a brief but memorable role and along with lots of familiar faces that worked in films at the time gets the job done on this very tough and action packed movie. Thumbs way up on this one.

Another entry into the blaxploitation genre, Arthur Marks's "Detroit 9000" has a black detective and a white detective cooperating to investigate the theft of some jewels from a congressman's fund raiser in the Motor City. For the most part the movie has a lot of the things that we expect to see in a blaxploitation flick, although they put an interesting twist on racial stereotypes: the black detective is the refined character while the white detective is the streetwise one. There was even a line or two that they obviously lifted from "Dirty Harry". Otherwise, it was just a fun movie with a funk soundtrack. Among the cast members are Hari Rhodes, Alex Rocco (Moe Greene in "The Godfather"), Vonetta McGee and Scatman Crothers (Dick Hallorann in "The Shining"). Detroit was long seen as the backbone of the US economy and now it's bankrupt. Geez.