I love this movie so much

Truly Dreadful Film

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The movie was good but it's not a movie about pimps. The movie is comparable to The Mack. Pimp movies don't have reform built into its plot. A movie can't have a message and be about pimps. It does not go together. A story about a bad guy turned good is a dime a dozen. Pimp movies aren't for that.

SPOILER ALERT! A not too bad blaxploitation film with a "happy ending." A reformed prostitute (Diana Sands) attempts to bring a fairly inept pimp down while the cops are on him like glue. Roscoe Orman plays the title role, a pimp who's seen better days, and he's woefully upstaged by his ridiculous outfits. It's all fast paced, sometimes stupid, even a bit campy but also fairly entertaining. Sands brings a lot of class to the film and Thalmus Rasulala is in it too. The faux-funk music is by JJ Johnson, who also contributed to CLEOPATRA JONES & THE FUZZ BROTHERS. Produced, inexplicably, by Zanuck/Brown (a year before they hit pay dirt with JAWS).

It is impossible to deny that this film has some hilarious parts. You can't help enjoying the absolutely ridiculous outfits and mannerisms of the pimps.Everything from Willie's beyond gaudy car to even the characters' names (i.e. the white pimp named Milky Way) is pretty entertaining.But it does have some serious (well okay, maybe not serious) implications as well. It is basically set up like most classic tragedies; a man in a position of great power falls due to a tragic flaw. Willie is likable enough not to deserve our hatred, but ruthless enough that we accept that he deserved his fate. Okay, so it's a bad idea to overthink this movie, but it is important to at least recognize that format.Furthermore, its social implications are pretty relevant. It portrayed Black and White characters in both positive and negative stereotypes, as well as providing more well rounded characters to serve as positive rolemodels. It started out glorifying the pimp lifestyle and slowly de-glamorized it as a life of dishonesty, drug addiction, violence, and eventual ruin. It may have really given young kids growing up in ghettoes in that era as made something to think about by slowly exposing the harsh realities of a life outside the law. Especially since it also presented positive Black role models who came from similar situations, like Cora, a prostitute-turned-social worker on a quest to help rescue other young girls from a life on the streets.

The ad and plotline for this movie may give you the impression that Willie Dynamite is a typical blaxploitation actioner with heavy doses of violence and sex but that is not the case. Willie Dynamite deals with a NYC pimp (Orman) who must deal not only with the police and a dedicated social worker (Sands), but also his fellow pimps who resent his increasing level of power within the city. There is not much in the way of nudity or blood or even profanity. During the last third of the movie, the story switches gears as both Orman and Sands go through some major changes which cause them to alter their outlook and approach to their lives. In doing this, Willie Dynamite goes in a different (and less sensational) direction than many films of this period chose to go. The film also takes on a higher level of believability which helps to bring the two main characters to life. Both Orman and Sands are impressive in their roles. It is sad to note that Sands died shortly after making this as she was a very talented woman. Orman, believe it or not, went on to become a staple on TV's Sesame Street as Gordon! Now that's a change of pace. His fur coats and fur hat add some unintentional laughs to the story, though at the time this was made, they were probably in vogue. In fact, Willie Dynamite has a great early 70s ambiance that many of the bigger movies of the time did not contain. Willie Dynamite may not be the best known of the blaxploitation genre but it deserves more attention than it got.