Michael_Elliott
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)** (out of 4)Male prostitute Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) gets tired of seeing a black man getting beaten by two white cops so he kills the cops. Sweetback takes off trying to evade the police who are hot on his trail.Thanks to its classic title and the fact that it's a historically important film, SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG has become somewhat of a folk/cult movie. There's no question that the film was a very important one for black cinema because it kick-started the blaxploitation genre but it also showed a different type of black man on the screen. White audiences were used to seeing Sidney Poitier and his kindness but none of that was to be seen with this film.Instead of taking it from the man, Sweetback decided to give it to the man and kill any white person who tried to hold him back. I'm sure a lot of people would watch this film today and call it all sorts of things but I think it's important that people realize that this was released just a few years after black people were still being beaten by the police and had water hoses turned on them. There's no question that Melvin Van Peebles broke all sorts of new ground and he deserves a lot of credit delivering this type of movie.With that said, there's still no question that the film itself isn't all that good. Basically we get a 97-minute running film where we see the hero bang several women, kill a few others and then he runs around the entire time. There's no question that the low-budget actually works for the film but at the same time everything is extremely slow and rather boring as well. Van Peebles is good in the role. He's given very little dialogue but that look tells you everything you need to know.SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG isn't a masterpiece but it deserves to be called a classic since it did break through so many new levels.
MisterWhiplash
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is Melvin Van Peebles harsh, incisive, intentional baffling and revolutionary take on the black experience in America. It isn't that, exactly, but it gets down the how "the Man" keeps the black community down at every turn they can. To be sure, this was the first of what was called 'black-exploitation' films, but it isn't exactly that either. Sure, it shows the film's hero (and believe you-me, Van Peebles IS a bad-ass hero, at least in some circles) having sex with a LOT of women, mostly black and some white thrown in at random moments, and it has a completely one-sided view on the Caucasian presence in America (either rabidly racist and crooked cops, or women with a 'craving' for the Sweetback, and the occasional bikers). But it also intends to be a movie by black people, of black people, and FOR black people, to make what is intended as a statement on not just the image of African Americans in the country at the time, but what wasn't shown in movies at all.In this latter sense, Van Peebles is making an attempt, much like Godard did with his early films (particularly Breathless and My Life to Live), to break through and re-configure conventions into something that is kind of f***ed up, but is alive and interesting in ways that more expensive or resourceful movies would have. Peebles makes his movies sort of out of junk-yard avant-garde parts, like some kind of garish vision taken in via superimpositions, montages, and a soundtrack as a combination of great Earth, Wind and Fire songs and a collage of voice-overs during Sweetback's run. Now, if looking at it from a purely objective viewpoint, of how it is technically, it's a little all over the place and, of course, totally dated. Peebles is also so intense with his camera- and rightfully so- that he lets his script sort of go into a better lack of focus; a lot of the time I only had a slight understanding of what was going on, and sometimes just not at all.This being said, it's a tremendous credit to Peebles as an independent filmmaker that the film even got finished; he had many production difficulties, as later chronicled in the film Bad Asssss. It's a very rough movie, with scenes going very much into the realm of pornography (even though, unlike most pornos of the period, it doesn't go for the jugular with its angles and shots- if anything Peebles is a little inert as a lover). All the same, it has a lot that pops out as striking, not just in its rambling assortment of visuals, which combine location shots of urban sprawl, deserts, and industrial areas, with the very real, un-glamorized faces of those in the 'ghetto', but in the subject matter as well. It is sensationalized for cinematic effect, but the point still remains today, and is quite ideal as Peebles's most notoriously crazy and weirdly exciting effort.
xxxpirata
I just watched that stupid "movie" hours ago and I just can't say anything about it except that it is a fully piece of trash. First of all, the director of the movie didn't have a better idea that using his OWN LITTLE SON performing a simulated SEX SCENE, completely naked and moving on top of a naked middle-aged woman. I just don't understand how he managed to avoid going to jail for child porn exploitation. Really incredible! Is it right to do so if you are a black American in the early seventies? I wonder what the black community felt about it. Did they approve it for the sake of the film? In the second place, the "hero" of the "movie" - Sweetback- is nothing but a prostitute and -as the story develops- a murderer running away from the police. Third, the WHITE men, those responsible for all the oppression and poorness of the NEGRO people, are nothing but a bunch of stupid jerks. You might think if being that makes you so powerful as to be so formidable oppressors! And if it weren't much, the women here -most of all black women- are depicted as filthy horny bitches just willing to have sex encounters with Sweetback. I just kind of feel disappointed with this piece of crap, specially by the way it characterizes the same people it is supposed to defend -the blacks. I'm not a black one -as a matter of fact I'm a South American Mestizo- but if I were one, especially in the United States, I would feel very SERIOUSLY OFFENDED by that kinky motion picture, the most racist movie I've ever seen. To all the brothers and sisters -and everybody who really feels proud and respect for themselves, regardless of race or gender- keep away from this stupid piece of SH*T!
doraangel
Sweet sweetback's baadasssss song IMO should get an award as worst film ever made ,so Bad asssss it will make you physically sick, maybe the idea was to get stoned and then view it. Such films like ' "manos the hands of fate" in comparison seem classic.The films sound score contains a single song played monotonously throughout that doesn't make a soundtrack as for great camera work all vomit,the main character seems to always end up in meaningless orgies because of his sexual prowess but the scenes lack any imagination strictly missionary and aren't erotic, there's a meaningless chase scene which you cant really tell who he's running from.The film ends abruptly, the producer must have run out of money ,give a monkey a film camera and you'd end up with a better movie.I disliked this film because it seems devoid of developed characters and plot it felt as if the story was conceived as the filmed rolled.IF you want to watch a true blaxploitation classic I recommend "hitman."
