Sunday, July 13, 2008

Just because some guys killed your boyfriend, raped you and tried to get you hooked on drugs doesn't mean you have to get upset: "Foxy Brown"

Well-rounded as my movie-watching may be, one weak spot has been blaxploitation. Sure, I've seen and enjoyed "Shaft. " ("Why don't you stop playing with yourself, Willy?") I think I started to watch "Super Fly" once and fell asleep. And that may be it. Well, unless you count "I'm Gonna Get You, Sucka," which I'm not sure you can.

Anyway, all this is to say that when I saw IFC airing "Foxy Brown," I knew I should see it, even if I didn't know anything about it beyond Pam Grier kicking a$$.

Released in 1974, our story has Grier as ... someone. There's not really any detail about her life (see IMDb trivia for an explanation), other than she has a brother and a boyfriend. Her brother is a deadbeat drug dealer. Her boyfriend is an undercover cop who just got a new identity. But when brother dear decides to settle his debt by turning in the cop, Foxy gets a little upset and goes looking for revenge -- from posing as a prostitute to enlisting a vigilante gang.

As you might guess, there's all sorts of foul language and racist slurs -- on both sides of the color line. Your suspicions that the acting isn't cited in the Julliard curriculum also would be correct. Sure, Grier is a known name, and we also are treated to Huggy Bear from "Starsky & Hutch." (He's her brother, and yeah, I know ... as opposed to Huggy Bear from "Hamlet.") But this movie was shot in 17 days on a half-million dollar budget. So no, they weren't paging the Academy after this one.

What was surprising, at least to me, was just how low things got for Foxy. Unlike "Shaft," which had a male hero -- as if the name "Shaft" doesn't give it away -- "Foxy" really gets run through the ringer. It's one thing to get beat up. It's another to get degraded all the way around. I'm sure there's a fascinating debate in her, and at least one thread on the IMDb boards seems to explore it: Is this movie demeaning or empowering? I mean, you know Foxy's going to win, and the bad guys are going to pay. But what she goes through along the way ... whoa.

In the end, this isn't a very good movie at all, but it's not boring, and it's worth seeing to get the full blaxploitation effect. It can be hard to watch at points, but that's less a product of the violence and more because of the bad dialogue. Or maybe you can keep a straight face when Foxy lets loose with this one:

"You pink-ass corrupt honky judge. Take your little wet noodle outta here, and if you see a man anywhere send him in because I do need a MAN!"

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