Wayne K
Considered by many to be the original Blaxploitation film, and so influential that it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2020, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was obviously a passion project for Melvin Van Peebles, who goes full Ed Wood and produces, writes, directs and stars in the film. I can see the message it's getting across, and I liked how it doesn't shy away from the degradation that members of the black community, who are actually credited at the beginning, were living in. Sadly, the actual composition of the films leaves a lot to be desired. It was clearly made on a small budget, but even the aforementioned schlockmeister Ed Wood produced movies that were at least somewhat comprehensible. Sweetback looks like it was filmed illegally, either by the cameraman who ducks behind inanimate object and sways around as if in a drunken stupor, or by someone with a second-hand camcorder recording it off the cinema screen. Everything about the production is unpleasant, be it the crackling audio, barely audible dialogue, the grainy and often overexposed visuals, the insanely repetitive soundtrack, the endless montages of driving or running or the colossally bad editing, courtesy of Mr. MVP himself. Much of what happens is utterly incoherent due to the combination of factors I just mentioned, and whatever struggles the lead goes through often fall by the wayside as the story goes on whatever asides it can find to extend the runtime. It's gone down in history for its political messaging and ground-breaking onscreen representation, but in terms of everything else that makes a movie work, it falls markedly short in nearly every department.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
07/06/23
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Audience Member
American blaxploitation at its toughest and brutal.
This is a picaresque story during the Black Panther Party movement in the 1970s with Mario Van Peebles directing.
A man named Sweetback, was a boy who grew up an orphan in a brothel in 1940s Los Angeles. His name came from his unique sexual prowess. As a grown up he performs seductive art for audiences.
The white police force needs a patsy for the murder in the community. Sweetback is hauled in to take the fall by his boss and two white officers end up dead. Now he's on the run fleeing to Mexico.
Some of the editing is bizarre and trippy, the handheld camera techniques give the movie a sense of realism but can be nauseating, and there's a plethora of sex scenes if you're uncomfortable with that.
I will give the movie credit that it is an entire chase from beginning to end with this man avoiding the authorities at almost every turn. He turns to radicalism with each person who knows him defending his good name.
Not for everyone but it is one of the most influential flicks made by an African American filmmaker. Captures the rough exterior of the ghetto life through the lens of a community that's still struggling.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
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William L
Far from a great film in terms of production values, with rough audio quality, cinematography, supporting performances, and editing (though it seems that this has some intent behind it, matching the tempo of the story), but notable for its influence, being among the first successful films to cater to black audiences by black directors; Sidney Poitier no more being the sole (some would say token) representation in mainstream movie production. The final "pursuit" segment is so unnecessarily drawn out and long, you'll likely be checking a clock once or twice. Rather on the nose and less than subtle with the treatment of its subject matter, glamorizing and commercializing its racial themes in the manner that blaxploitation would come to be known for. But without Sweetback as that first step, none of the black Hollywood headliners (actors, directors, writers alike) would be where they are. (3/5)
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
09/28/20
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Solomon M
Avante garde film which precludes the "blaxploitation era" of the late 60s/ mid 70s. Filmed on the fly and is rough, it does deserve it's then X rating for sex(there is a scene in which the director's Melvin Van Peebles' underage son Mario has simulated sex with an older actress), violence and language but this film showed Hollywood that black film makers could make products that were commercial viable. A landmark film.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
05/24/19
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Audience Member
This is, to say the least, a challenging film. Worth watching if just for it's historical importance, the movie is hard to swallow and is rarely gratifying. There is a serious lack of plotting and characterization, and the movie is practically pornographic at times-from the first scene on, it is hard to watch, as a 15-year-old boy is practically raped, and that rape serving like Peter Parker's spiderbite, turning a boy into a (super)man. To a degree, the movie plays into the dual fantasy space of the American racial imagination: The hypersexualized Black man, who is both threat and hero, criminal and paragon-is this hard to watch because I am a well-meaning white liberal in a very different political context, or was this a true catharsis for its intended oppressed audience? Is the camera indicative of a white gaze or a black one? The editing has a hazy, jazz-like quality, flashes of technical artistry bordering on the avant-garde-again, hard to watch, hard to look away, hard to dismiss, hard to accept, forcing the question of my own spectatorship.
REWATCH: It begins with the rape of a child and ends with the murder of a police dog, yet what happens in between, while no less scandalous, violent, and shocking—the rape and murder of a whole community, billed as the star by MVP—gets typically played as heroic without a second thought every day across our various screens, from local news to Oscar-bait dramas to social media. (To quote Brecht: "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?") Yet such offensive bookends, unlike actual exploitation cinema, are not meant to draw in prurient eyes, but (so the legend goes) worked instead to keep racist obstructionists out of the production: You simply could not have such a revolutionary ending without such a transgressive beginning. In both a practical and psychoanalytic sense, it is the white gaze—rather than directorial depravity—which creates the myth of the hyper-sexual Black radical, a figure that MVP embodies to its most subversive ends.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Sweet Sweetback is one strange mutha of a movie. It's noisy, lewd and not the funky, more linear detective thriller that Shaft was. If you are easily offended, I'd recommend steering well clear from the beginning. It opens with a young man of questionable legal age having sex with an older woman. This unfortunately sets the tone and it never quite redeems itself...
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
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