Original Gangstas is the kind of movie that sounds like a good idea when you’re six bourbons deep at a VHS nostalgia convention. Round up the legends of 1970s blaxploitation—Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree—and throw them back into the streets of Gary, Indiana like they never left. You know, for old times’ sake. Unfortunately, by the time the first bullets fly and the old folks limber up for revenge, one realizes this movie should’ve come with a Life Alert subscription and a bottle of Advil.
The cast is pure pedigree—Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree—each name a titan from the golden era of gritty, funky, unapologetic street cinema. These were the faces that once swaggered across celluloid with dynamite in their fists and righteous fury in their eyes. But Original Gangstas doesn’t honor their legacy—it wheelchairs it out, drops it in front of a green screen, and lets it rot in a pile of clichés that smell like VHS mildew and stale Marlboros.
Maybe part of the problem is I was never a diehard fan of the blaxploitation genre to begin with. There’s potential there, obviously—a raw, feral kind of energy and the possibility of rebellion on film. But too often, the storytelling gets caught in an echo chamber. The plots rarely veer off the same tired highways: black dude fights off corrupt white cop, black dude squares up against local drug kingpin who, surprise, is also black. There’s grit, sure—but grit without dimension just grinds the gears. You keep waiting for the genre to break free from its own tropes, to evolve or at least surprise you. Instead, it’s the same loop playing on a busted tape.
Original Gangstas had the chance to be that evolution—a reunion of legends turned reckoning. Instead, it’s a shallow victory lap, one that trips over its own nostalgia and collapses under the weight of what could’ve been.
Fred Williamson, who also produced the thing, lumbers through his scenes with the conviction of a man who thought this would be shot over the weekend and be forgotten by Monday. Jim Brown looks like he’s wondering where the hell his paycheck is. Or maybe he’s forgotten just what the hell a ‘paycheck’ is. Pam Grier is given so little to do, you start to wonder if she just wandered onto the set thinking it was a reunion barbecue. And poor Richard Roundtree seems to be acting from a completely different movie—probably a better one.
Then there’s Gary, Indiana—a city so depressed it makes Detroit look like Martha’s Vineyard. The movie tries to paint it as a battleground for old-school values versus new-school violence, but it’s all cardboard. The “gang” of modern young toughs look like a group of mall employees who lost a bet. They menace like they’re auditioning for a low-budget Sprite commercial, all frowns and no presence. The supposed conflict feels about as dangerous as a slow-moving bingo night.
And we have to talk about Larry Cohen’s editing and pacing. You’d think this guy cut the film using a pair of oven mitts and a blindfold. Transitions are abrupt, scenes drag on like they’re waiting for a bus, and action sequences have all the urgency of a retirement home line-dancing class. The film’s rhythm is off—every punch lands late, every gunshot sounds like it was dubbed in from another movie, probably a better one.
The plot, such as it is, involves a local gang terrorizing the neighborhood, killing a rising basketball star…Then the old heads rise from their barstools and lazy boys to take back the streets. Cue training montages that mostly consist of squinting and breathing heavily, and gunfights so stiff you could mistake them for arthritis flare-ups.
There are brief flashes of what could’ve been—Pam Grier leveling a look that could still melt steel, or Roundtree showing a glimmer of that Shaft swagger—but they’re too fleeting, buried beneath a screenplay held together with duct tape and fumes from an old man’s farts.
Original Gangstas wants to be The Expendables before The Expendables, but instead it plays like a community theater version of Death Wish set in a cul-de-sac. It tries to resurrect an era, but forgets that you need more than just the bodies—you need the soul, the attitude, and a damn decent editor.
Instead, we’re left with a movie that feels like a wake nobody wanted to attend. It’s a painful reminder that some legacies are better left untarnished, and some gangstas should stay retired.
1.5 out of 5 F-Bombs—and that’s being generous.
