Mindless Action Movies: Three the Hard Way

This movie would have fit nicely into last month's theme as it stars Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly but it's also a wonderfully excessive action movie. Not as mindless as some of the others we'll list this month, but no less action packed or over the top.

A casual racist party. (The party is casual, the racism is overt.)

The plot unfolds something like this: White supremacists have developed a biological weapon they are preparing to dump into the water of three major cities. The effects of this weapon? It kills Black people while leaving white people unharmed. Lucky for the Black and anti-racist population at large, Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly), Jagger Daniels (Fred Williamson), and Jimmy Lait (Jim Brown) are on top of this.

The pacing: The set up for this is a bit slow as they introduce each hero individually, but in the end each man takes on his own group of bad guys, so the payoff is three fold!

The stunts: Hal Needham was the stunt coordinator, and it shows. This movie is FULL of amazing stunt work, and it's also got some of our favorite car stunts. They clearly set the bar that the Ozsplpitation movies of the 70s and 80s were trying to raise.

A lovely surprise: These ladies show up out of nowhere making us wish they had a spin off film all their own. (Unfortunate side note: one of them is in The Glove, and we feel really, really bad for her.)

The director: This is one of the 4 movies Gordon Park Jr. directed before his untimely death in a plane crash while filming over seas. He also directed Aaron Loves Angela, Thomasine & Bushrod, and Super Fly. Makes us sad to think what else could have come from this director.