Review: The Big Score

Fred Williamson stars as a Chicago cop who gets chewed out by his boss (Ed Lauter) and forced to turn in his badge when wrongly accused of pocketing money from a drug dealing sting. Now he needs to find the dough and clear his name. John Saxon, Richard Roundtree, and Ron Dean play fellow cops. Michael Dante and Joe Spinell play drug crims on different levels on the drug kingpin totem pole, with Bruce Glover and brass-knux sporting Tony King as particularly nasty thugs on their payroll. D’Urville Martin plays an ex-con, and Chelcie Ross is a slimy lawyer. Singer Nancy Wilson plays Williamson’s main squeeze, who is a singer (natch).

 

Fred Williamson’s director-producer-star efforts are always cheap money-grabbing affairs in which he’ll hire his relatively famous friends for a day or two’s shooting and put their names on the damn poster nonetheless. A couple of these ‘Po Boy Productions’ efforts turned out OK (“Mean Johnny Barrows” in particular), and this 1983 cops-and-corruption flick is probably one of the mild best ones. In fact, at times it’s quite watchable, if ultimately forgettable and with far too many Nancy Wilson on-screen musical performances than necessary. It almost fools you into thinking it’s something that it’s not…but it is, it still very much is business as usual for ‘Hammer’.

 

This one comes with a slightly more professional sheen than usual by way of a top cast of 80s character actors. Even then, some of the cast is better served by Williamson and screenwriter Gail Morgan Hickman (Hack works like “Murphy’s Law” and “Death Wish 4: The Crackdown”) than others. “Shaft” himself Richard Roundtree has barely a cameo, and a not very interesting one at that, whilst John Saxon disappears well before the end, unfortunately. That’s a shame, because Saxon has good rapport with Williamson when given the opportunity. Also solid is an admittedly thankless Ed Lauter as the clichéd police captain, whilst the Henry Silva-esque Michael Dante is quite good as a slick crook, but underused. Bruce Glover has one of his finest hours as a thug, and Joe Spinell was always an expert in scummy sleazy characters. He’s perfect here, as is long-time Williamson associate D’Urville Martin in a classic cameo as a formerly incarcerated explosives expert. He’s funny as always, though both he and Spinell should’ve had more screen time (Glover gets more time than Spinell, oddly enough). Veteran character actor Chelcie Ross is on screen long enough as a slimy lawyer named Hoffa to show that even in 1983 he looked about 50 years old. Good performance, but just the one scene because Williamson was focussed more on himself and the lovely Miss Wilson, I guess. Singer Nancy Wilson (not to be confused with Heart guitarist and all-round bad arse Nancy Wilson) is a very classy lady, and it’s nice that Williamson isn’t banging someone half his age here, but one song from her would’ve sufficed, surely. The rest is just padding, even finding time for some piano-playing dude to do a version of Minnie Riperton’s ‘Les Fleur’ at the expense of any depth for the (too) many characters floating around. 3+ musical performances in one 85 minute film. The musical interludes also manage to drag the pace down considerably, and without the benefit to the plot that more character development would’ve had. It’s a real problem, and it’s a clear indication of Williamson’s real motives here: Cheap product with profit solely in mind. Like I said, business as usual for the guy. I only point it out because the guy does have genuine talent, especially in front of the camera (As a director he’s workmanlike to be charitable). Watch Larry Cohen’s “Black Caesar” for proof of that. Hell, even here he gives a solid performance as an angry, revenge/justice-minded cop. He also gives himself a heck of a cool entrance, white-suited, black-hatted, and cigar-chompin’ as ever as his directorial credit appears on screen. Well-done, Hammer. Well-done. Like I said though, he’s actually in angry mode here and it suits him quite well as an actor I have to say. I just wish more effort was put in elsewhere to distinguish the film itself.

 

A well-acted but routine and thin cop flick with far too many characters and not enough time devoted to most of them. It could’ve been a lot better if a little bit more effort had been put in to the characters and story, and if the music interludes didn’t mess with the pacing. It’s not as cheap-looking as some of Williamson’s hack-jobs though, and the very 80s score by Jay Chattaway (“Silver Bullet”, “Missing in Action”) is cool Carpenter-esque stuff, if repetitive. It’s an OK film but I’m not recommending it when it could’ve been even better. How can you waste Richard Roundtree like that, for crying out loud?

 

Rating: C+