Absolutely Brilliant!

A Disappointing Continuation

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

There are a few things you need to know about this film before you see it: 1) It includes pretty graphic sex scenes, one of them featuring the director's teenage son Mario (in the first few minutes). 2) It features a lead that barely speaks throughout the film. 3) It will be a nightmare to watch if you're in it for the action. "Sweetback" is a piece of history which talks about the meaning of race in the US. The film is not realistic, but a metaphor - its main character a "man without qualities," its setting a prototypical black ghetto, its story a mixture of fugitive slave narrative, black power pseudo-propaganda, and nightmarish action thriller. The story is pretty simple: a black stud performing in a sex show for white audiences in the black ghetto is routinely stopped by white police officers (to make up the numbers). Witnessing the cops beat a young black power activist, he uses his handcuffs to kill both policemen and elopes with the boy. All this takes about 20 minutes of the film - the rest documents Sweetback's escape. Sweetback's actions will evoke the worst of racism in the white establishment, while at the same time exposing the ideological malaise of the black strivers. The film is a pain to watch, and that's precisely what it should be. And it speaks against a reality that still exists - blatant white racism and unwillingness to address the issue of race, black conformism and political disaffection.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is Melvin Van Peebles harsh, incisive, intentional baffling and revolutionary take on the black experience in America. It isn't that, exactly, but it gets down the how "the Man" keeps the black community down at every turn they can. To be sure, this was the first of what was called 'black-exploitation' films, but it isn't exactly that either. Sure, it shows the film's hero (and believe you-me, Van Peebles IS a bad-ass hero, at least in some circles) having sex with a LOT of women, mostly black and some white thrown in at random moments, and it has a completely one-sided view on the Caucasian presence in America (either rabidly racist and crooked cops, or women with a 'craving' for the Sweetback, and the occasional bikers). But it also intends to be a movie by black people, of black people, and FOR black people, to make what is intended as a statement on not just the image of African Americans in the country at the time, but what wasn't shown in movies at all.In this latter sense, Van Peebles is making an attempt, much like Godard did with his early films (particularly Breathless and My Life to Live), to break through and re-configure conventions into something that is kind of f***ed up, but is alive and interesting in ways that more expensive or resourceful movies would have. Peebles makes his movies sort of out of junk-yard avant-garde parts, like some kind of garish vision taken in via superimpositions, montages, and a soundtrack as a combination of great Earth, Wind and Fire songs and a collage of voice-overs during Sweetback's run. Now, if looking at it from a purely objective viewpoint, of how it is technically, it's a little all over the place and, of course, totally dated. Peebles is also so intense with his camera- and rightfully so- that he lets his script sort of go into a better lack of focus; a lot of the time I only had a slight understanding of what was going on, and sometimes just not at all.This being said, it's a tremendous credit to Peebles as an independent filmmaker that the film even got finished; he had many production difficulties, as later chronicled in the film Bad Asssss. It's a very rough movie, with scenes going very much into the realm of pornography (even though, unlike most pornos of the period, it doesn't go for the jugular with its angles and shots- if anything Peebles is a little inert as a lover). All the same, it has a lot that pops out as striking, not just in its rambling assortment of visuals, which combine location shots of urban sprawl, deserts, and industrial areas, with the very real, un-glamorized faces of those in the 'ghetto', but in the subject matter as well. It is sensationalized for cinematic effect, but the point still remains today, and is quite ideal as Peebles's most notoriously crazy and weirdly exciting effort.

Sweet sweetback's baadasssss song IMO should get an award as worst film ever made ,so Bad asssss it will make you physically sick, maybe the idea was to get stoned and then view it. Such films like ' "manos the hands of fate" in comparison seem classic.The films sound score contains a single song played monotonously throughout that doesn't make a soundtrack as for great camera work all vomit,the main character seems to always end up in meaningless orgies because of his sexual prowess but the scenes lack any imagination strictly missionary and aren't erotic, there's a meaningless chase scene which you cant really tell who he's running from.The film ends abruptly, the producer must have run out of money ,give a monkey a film camera and you'd end up with a better movie.I disliked this film because it seems devoid of developed characters and plot it felt as if the story was conceived as the filmed rolled.IF you want to watch a true blaxploitation classic I recommend "hitman."

Some people are probably going to object to my 5/10 rating. After all, Melvin Van Peebles sought to show the world what the black community in the United States was experiencing. But it's weird to think that a movie about racism had some stereotypes (namely, the sex scene portraying the black man as great in bed). The plot of course has political activist Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) running from The Man after killing some cops who were attacking a Black Panther. All in all, "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song" is good for what it's trying to show. What would have been really neat would have been if they'd lid-locked Nixon and forced him to watch this.