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Major problem is that it cannot decide whether to be hard-boiled crime or exploitation action flick. So for the first 75 minutes our hero wonders around LA but his investigation regarding his brother killing is pretty pathetic. He keeps asking/threating the same prostitute who used to be involved with his brother and he also keeps getting harassed by two (not very) tough guys urging him to get the hell out of the town. In the meantime he fucks two girls and runs into sleazy porn movie peddler. White of course.
Standard stuff. Some flashy dialogues and bad-ass one-liners plus few outraging hairdos and crazy clothes backed up by a funky soundtrack. Decent and watchable, but lacking big time in the action department. Laughable at times, especially fights are staged very amateurish.
It gets better in the last 20 minutes. After waiting for the first corpse for so long, body count starts to climb rapidly. We get cold blooded execution (x2), hanging, scarface style shoot-out and one unfortunate soul even gets torn apart by lions! But these scenes too are choreographed and executed pretty poorly and especially fake blood looks simply ridiculous.
Highlight and the saving grace of this flick is definitely Pam Grier! Although her role is pretty small and not very significant one, she's credited right after the leading hero Bernie Casey. Which I find unusual since Hit Man slightly precedes Coffy, Foxy Brown and all those other great movies that we love her for. I don't think she had been famous yet in '72 but director obviously realized who the real star of his movie was.
5/10
