Three
the Hard Way
The title song
imagines another race of besieged people and profits from it by way of a metaphor.
Here is the concentration camp and the extermination scheme, aimed at black
folks. Jay Robinson is the leader of the pack.
The red white and
blue speeds across Brooklyn Bridge as three motorcyclists in leather. These
ladies sap the will of the oppressor until he’s ripe for questioning. After
that, it’s the liberation and home free.
Jim Kelly’s
framed for dope and fights back, giving the camera even a good look at karate
face to face. Jim Brown fights his way with a machine gun across the main hall
to a coign of vantage. Behind him, Fred Williamson tumbles through French
windows and sits up, in one movement, cigar undisturbed.
The directorial
hand has the romance of Sunset Boulevard west of the Strip, shopping in Beverly
Hills, etc. It moves to the resourcefulness of Chicago encountering its own
remnants, and advances to the big-city homecoming of New York.