# Detroit 9000 (1973)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    DETROIT 9000

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D.
     Rolling Thunder
     Director: Arthur Marks
     Writer: Orville Hampton
     Cast:  Alex Rocco, Hari Rhodes, Rudy Challenger, Vonetta
    McGee, Ella Edwards, Scatman Crothers

"Detroit 9000" is an energetic movie with animated chase scenes, sharp (if occasionally stilted) dialogue, and an earnest cast of performers who appear to take this fun movie seriously. lt's difficult to call this exhibit of a 1973 film a revival since it was barely seen when first introduced and then disappeared from the screens without so much as going to the obligatory tape. Initially hitting the theaters at a time that African-Americans were aggressively asserting their rights and calling for black pride, "Detroit 9000" was an entry into the black film explosion of the 70s, the so-called blaxploitation market that introduced Pam Grier, Isaac Hayes and Richard Roundtree to movie audiences of all races. "Detroit 9000" is back to dovetail with the release of a new volume by Rolling Thunder Books called "What It Is...What It Was! in which authors Gerald Martinez, Diana Martinez and Andres Chavez explain and illustrate the slick black heroes and funky fashions of the time. The book features reflections by Quentin Tarantino and Samuel Jackson, who discuss what the blaxploitation films mean to them and to film buffs.

The standard under which all such films might be compared is "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song," which Melvin Van Peebles introduced two years earlier. Produced, directed, finances, written, scored and starred in by Van Peebles, "Sweetback"'s title character is a superstud who runs perpetually from the police and, despite his criminal background, gets the audience to root for him against the cops. While Van Peebles protests the racism of the police forces, his own ideology was reverse-racist. He joined the crowd in calling cops "pigs," the whites "honkies," and the white-controlled establishment hopelessly corrupt.

By contrast "Detroit 9000" does not take racial sides. Orville Hampton's screenplay is balanced and integrated, highlighting jerks and heroes on both sides of the racial spectrum. Designed to appeal to a broad spectrum of the movie public, "Detroit 9000" is flawed by its very good nature: in trying to offend nobody, it lacks the edginess and strong point of view of the Van Peebles drama. The positive side of this blemish is that its heroes, both black and white, are sympathetic characters that we root for. In part a whodunnit, "Detroit 9000" is at base a whydunnit, headlining a white cop who seems to be selling stolen jewelry for his own enrichment but who may actually be heroically setting up a smuggler for a big bust.

In a well-orchestrated jewel robbery, ski-masked thieves break into a social club that has invited rich constituents of Congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger) to contribute jewelry to his campaign for Michigan governor. Are the robbers white or black? The racial feature is important because the politician believes that the heist was perpetrated by whites determined to put a damper on a black candidate's campaign. Lt. Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco), a white cop with a spectacular record, is assigned to head the investigation. Though Bassett prefers to work alone, he is assigned a smart black partner, Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes), a scheme which only adds to Bassett's problems: he is raging mad about being passed over for a promotion and is in great need of money to support his seriously ill wife. The investigation centers on a high-class brothel which is patronized by Bassett, who is apparently held in sincere esteem by some of the lovely women who work there. A hacked-up corpse complicates the issues, with a great deal riding on whether the dead body is white or black.

"Detroit 9000" parades a cross-section of characters across the screen including a corrupt politician, a lascivious reverend (Scatman Crothers), a hooker who has long been fond of Jesse Williams (Vonette McGee), the hooker's sugar-man (Herbert Jefferson, Jr.) and Danny's mentally disturbed wife. In one overblown scene seething with racist epithets, the wheelchair-bound Mrs. Bassett rails against the "black faces" she finds all about her in the public hospital and refuses to be put in a better facility because that one is filled with "bohunks and polacks." Aside from this tantrum there is little racist rhetoric in a movie designed to illustrate the old saw, "There are good and bad of all races." To insure that the less verbal members of the audience understand this, director Arthur Marks fills the screen with stirring chase scenes, a pulpy panoply of shootouts in which nobody just dies: all pass from the scene with a maximum of bodily spasms.

    Rated R.  Running time: 106 minutes.  (C) Harvey Karten
    1998

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