Few would be shocked to discover that Black Caesar is a tour de force in style, but it’s so much more than mere aesthetics. There is a surprising amount of substance in this sophisticated character study masquerading as crass blaxploitation. It’s a criminal epic about a tragic hero reaching the pinnacle of his ambitions, only to be faced with the reality that life has obstacles that cannot be outmuscled or outran.
The film opens up on a teenaged version of Tommy Gibbs scraping by as a fledging criminal in New York City’s seedy underbelly. He is sent to the apartment of a crooked cop to make a cash drop, but surprise, the cop is a virulent racist. The pig accuses Tommy of theft, which he denies. The racist LEO brutalizes Tommy for his insolence and arrests him. Off to the clink our tragic hero goes. The beating was a socio-political epiphany for Tommy. Shortly before his incarceration, he waxes poetic from a hospital bed - painting post prison visions of grandeur for his reluctant friend, Joe. A freshly radicalized Tommy seemingly uses prison as a criminal university - ensuring he will no longer be the nail upon his release, but instead the hammer.
The film doesn’t actually depict his time in prison. Black Caesar picks back up as Tommy is set loose on NYC. It wastes no time at all launching into stylized gangster violence. The pace at which Tommy ascends the criminal underworld and defeats enemies is abrupt at first. He achieves all of his goals with Machiavellian ease. For a time, it seems as if the movie may as well be over, as Tommy has done what he set out to do. However, the movie’s true narrative focus becomes clear as Tommy becomes the villain of his own story. Somewhere along the way, he loses his humanity. When hubris finally catches up to him, his egomaniacal toxicity have been the people around him have been driven away. The rollercoaster he rode to the top of NYC’s criminal landscape enters a free fall.
Now alone, Tommy is shot fleeing from assassins. The cop who beat him as a teenager tracks Tommy back to his office to finish him off, but NYC’s first black don uses what little strength he has left to overcome his old nemesis and beat him to death with a shine box. Then - with nobody left for him to exist in opposition to - Tommy - rapidly losing blood - dreams shattered - runs back towards the ruinous wastelands that used to be his childhood home. A random gang of teenagers attacks him like a pack of hyenas tearing apart a wounded old Lion - exiled from his pride. Tommy presumably dies there in the rubble. His criminal life literally having come full circle.
Black Caesar is an inspired piece of 70s filmmaking from beginning to end. Its exceptional craftsmanship stands out in a sea of lazily made genre-mates. The running sequence at the very beginning of the film may be my very favorite of its kind. I got the sense that this was a meticulously storyboarded project. Impressive helicopter shots of the city’s urban center evoke an inescapable concrete hell where one’s screams would certainly be lost to the rest of the world. Landscape shots of New York City’s outskirts depict an equally inescapable wasteland- an endless expanse of destroyed and abandoned buildings. This use of setting gives the viewers a powerful impression of the desperation and cruelty that created Tommy and underworld he operates in. The visuals in this movie are elevated by James Brown’s scoring. This was his first time making music for a film and the result is iconic.
It’s not a perfect movie though. There are no compelling female characters. They are all hysterical victims, except for the one white lady. That lady is a bit of an enigma. I suppose she exists to affirm Tommy’s idealogical purity to the viewer. Maybe she was a swerve to remind you that this isn’t your average blaxploitation movie. Still an odd and poorly acted character, no less. To be honest, none of the acting in this movie is top notch. It’s all C to B movie level acting, even in the case of Fred Williamson as Tommy Gibbs. Williamson is captivating for sure, but it’s not exactly a Denzel Washington quality performance.
Verdict - It’s good, very good.
Black Caesar transcends the exploitation tag. A wide audience could enjoy this movie on multiple levels. It’s more or less Black Scarface. It’s a little less about race than you would assume going in. The director was actually some jewish guy, so maybe it was good he stayed in his lane. Larry Cohen did succeed in making an emotionally intelligent movie that was more about the fragility of dreams and one’s ego. That is not to say there aren't any astute social observations to be gleaned from the movie’s plot. There are, but the movie stands on its own better as a broad depiction of a mobbed up anti-hero.
