Three the Hard Way (1974)

Information

Siskoid
Jim "Black Belt Jones" Kelly died this July, so in August, I programmed one of his film, Three the Hard Way, for a Kung Fu Friday. We like a bit of blaxploitation sometimes. Three the Hard Way isn't Kelly's film, the protagonist is really Jim Brown playing Quincy Jones as an action star, but I think he's probably the coolest of the three cats trying to save the black race from whitey's genocide-causing chemical dumped in the water supply of three American cities (a plot borrowed and parodied for Black Dynamite) with his gold leather suit and dislike of guns. The third is playa mercenary Fred Williamson, and together or separately (in each city, the movie moves around A LOT), and sometimes with the help of color-coded S&M biker chicks, they kick ass and get to the root of the problem. It's not a superbly edited film, though it tries to be artistic at times, and there's a lot of padding as the heroes go on dates, travel or record music on their spare time, but the best blaxploitation flicks don't take themselves very seriously and even the cheapness (which doesn't extend to the locations or explosions) doesn't get in the way of the entertainment, only adds to it. 10 years 4 months ago