Review: "SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG" is Still Beatin' Some White Ass

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 184 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song (1971)

Running time: 97 minutes (1 hour, 37 minutes)

Rating: MPAA – X; re-rated R in 1974 

EDITOR/WRITER/DIRECTOR: Melvin Van Peebles

PRODUCERS: Jerry Gross and Melvin Van Peebles

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Bob Maxwell

COMPOSERS: Earth Wind & Fire and Melvin Van Peebles

CRIME/DRAMA/ACTION/THRILLER

Starring:  Melvin Van Peebles, Simon Chuckster, Hubert Scales, John Dullaghan, Johnny Amos, Mario Van Peebles, Megan Peebles, and Max Van Peebles

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 action-thriller, drama, and crime film from writer-director Melvin Van Peebles.  It is considered a seminal black exploitation film or “blaxploitation” film, being one of the first that kind.  The film focuses on a Black man who goes on the run after brutally beating two police officers, with help from other marginalized people and outsiders.

After saving a black protester (likely a Black Panther) by brutally beating the two cops who were brutalizing the protester, Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles), an apolitical sex performer goes on the run from the white pigs and other white law enforcement types.  He heads for Mexico with help from the black community and disaffected Hell’s Angels, and he also meets many unique characters on the way to freedom.

Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback Baad Asssss Song is considered by many people to be the film that ushered in the blaxploitation film wave.  With its emphasis on fighting “the man” (the white power structure, in particular corrupt city officials and policemen) and graphic and gratuitous sex, the film is the prototypical blaxploitation film.  However, there is likely no other film like this one in its portrayal of police corruption and the of the racist attitudes that prevail among white law enforcement officials.

Structurally, the film has a bare and simple plot, and the script is absent of story and character development.  In a many ways, the film itself is more impressionistic than literal, while the theme is literally against white oppression and (evil) white cops.  Van Peebles in collaboration with Earth, Wind, and Fire, the R&B group who would go on to have huge crossover success on the pop charts provide a constant musical backdrop for the film.  So sometimes, this movie seems like an overly long music video.  In spite of its narrative shortcomings, Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song is bold stroke in using film to not only communicate messages and ideas, but to also be used as a means of protest.  The film is the work of an artist/firebrand; one must open up to feelings, experiences, emotions, and thoughts that are alien in order to get to the art, and when you get it, Sweetback will be like nothing else.

7 of 10

B+

★★★½ out of 4 stars

EDITED:  Sunday, July 14, 2024

NOTES:

2020 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  National Film Registry

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