110th Street between 5th Avenue and Central Park West marks the Northern limit of one of the most beautiful parks in any urban setting. To the North of the park begins a vast area better known as Harlem. Of course, the Harlem of today, with its gentrified parts, is a completely different area than it was in the 1970s when drugs were more prevalent and conditions were worse than today.
This story takes us to that era where two Italian mafia men come to get the money from the drug trade. Unknown to them, three black residents of Harlem have prepared a stick up to rob the proceeds from the sale of dope to the mostly black users. One of the two would be robbers, with a machine gun eliminates the two Italians and some of their local dealers. The get away involves killing a police officer on the street.
A local Harlem police, Lieutenant Pope takes charge in the investigation. The appearance of Capt. Mattelli challenges Pope about his authority. Mattelli, a dirty cop, has a lot at stake. He is being paid handsomely to look the other way by Doc Johnson, who controls a lot of the criminal element working for him.
The police get lucky when they find one of the trio who has gone into a bar flaunting his newly found money. He leads them into not only the attention of the police, but to Nick D'Salvio, the son-in-law of the mafia boss. D'Salvio wants to get to the guys that stole the money, at whatever cost. He is a man without scruples who will stop at nothing.
The two remaining robbers are a product of the poverty of the area. Out of desperation they had committed the crime, figuring they were taking the money from bandits that were enslaving the locals with the drugs they were pushing. Eventually, all the men meet their death either from D'Salvio, or the police.
One of the best examples of the blaxploitation genre, the film had values in the way director Barry Shear opened up the film by taking the action into the streets of Harlem with the dilapidated tenements, poverty, filth, and desperation. The result is a film that is exciting to watch today to get a real feeling what those mean streets looked like during a period when lawlessness reigned freely. It also serves as a social commentary about how the whites, in the case of Mattelli and the Italian mafiosi used the black population to push their deathly drugs to people that could ill afford them.
Anthony Quinn does a credible job as Mattelli. Anthony Franciosa was at his best portraying the sadist D'Salvio. Yaphet Kotto appears as Lt. Pope. There are some excellent acting from some of the supporting players like Richard Ward, Paul Benjamin, Ed Bernard and Antonio Fargas, just to name a few.
Jack Priestley took his cameras to a part of Manhattan most people never venture into, capturing in great detail the flavor of the area.
This story takes us to that era where two Italian mafia men come to get the money from the drug trade. Unknown to them, three black residents of Harlem have prepared a stick up to rob the proceeds from the sale of dope to the mostly black users. One of the two would be robbers, with a machine gun eliminates the two Italians and some of their local dealers. The get away involves killing a police officer on the street.
A local Harlem police, Lieutenant Pope takes charge in the investigation. The appearance of Capt. Mattelli challenges Pope about his authority. Mattelli, a dirty cop, has a lot at stake. He is being paid handsomely to look the other way by Doc Johnson, who controls a lot of the criminal element working for him.
The police get lucky when they find one of the trio who has gone into a bar flaunting his newly found money. He leads them into not only the attention of the police, but to Nick D'Salvio, the son-in-law of the mafia boss. D'Salvio wants to get to the guys that stole the money, at whatever cost. He is a man without scruples who will stop at nothing.
The two remaining robbers are a product of the poverty of the area. Out of desperation they had committed the crime, figuring they were taking the money from bandits that were enslaving the locals with the drugs they were pushing. Eventually, all the men meet their death either from D'Salvio, or the police.
One of the best examples of the blaxploitation genre, the film had values in the way director Barry Shear opened up the film by taking the action into the streets of Harlem with the dilapidated tenements, poverty, filth, and desperation. The result is a film that is exciting to watch today to get a real feeling what those mean streets looked like during a period when lawlessness reigned freely. It also serves as a social commentary about how the whites, in the case of Mattelli and the Italian mafiosi used the black population to push their deathly drugs to people that could ill afford them.
Anthony Quinn does a credible job as Mattelli. Anthony Franciosa was at his best portraying the sadist D'Salvio. Yaphet Kotto appears as Lt. Pope. There are some excellent acting from some of the supporting players like Richard Ward, Paul Benjamin, Ed Bernard and Antonio Fargas, just to name a few.
Jack Priestley took his cameras to a part of Manhattan most people never venture into, capturing in great detail the flavor of the area.