Bucktown

• Also known as Bucktown, USA
• Directed by Arthur Marks
• July 2, 1975

A former black activist comes to a small town to bury his brother who was killed for refusing to pay white cops protection money.

Small-town corruption where the outside hero comes in and then muscles his way through it all before bringing peace and democracy back with a relatively high body count and a big helping of explosions. Nothing new there. It’s a formula that’s been used numerous times over the years. But as with any re-used plot it’s not that it’s been reused but can they make it entertaining while re-using?

Duke Johnson (Fred Williamson) returns to town where his brother who has passed away ran a popular bar. As he hangs around to settle affairs, he learns that his brother’s death wasn’t of natural causes, but rather at the hands of the corrupt local white police department who because of the spinelessness and weak leadership of the mayor run a protection racket. So Duke calls for some friends to fix things.

One would expect that Duke Johnson along with his friends would clean up the town and peace would be restored with the credits to follow but oh no! The twist is that after they kick out or kill the white police department Duke’s friend Roy (Thalmus Rasulala) along with Roy’s gang move right in and do what the police were doing but worse. That was a twist I did not expect.

Pam Grier co-stars as Aretha-a character that is essentially the love interest. She shouts a lot and dresses down Duke which basically pushes him emotionally into fighting with the corrupt cops and his corrupt friend. I expected her character to get a little more into the action. Maybe occasionally brandishing a shotgun but she doesn’t do that. Aretha tries to help out a former football player named Harley (Bernie Hamilton) who is a heavy drinker and keeps getting assaulted by either the cops or by Duke’s former friends. She doesn’t really succeed too much there. 

What bothers me-and I expected them to somehow address this-is that Duke’s friend is tricked by his goons into going against Duke. Supposedly Duke and Roy are close friends, but the goons are able to manipulate him by beating up people and doing this and that and giving false stories painting themselves is the good guys. I expected a last-minute kumbaya moment where Duke and Roy join forces to go against his corrupt goons but that didn’t happen. 

If anything those two goons-the creepy T.J. (Tony King) and the vocal Hambone (Carl Weathers)-were the real villains of the story. While they get their just desserts, there’s never any realization by anybody on any level of what they were doing. At least not that I picked up. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but it does hurt things.

But let’s talk about the action. It’s great. The first fight and the gunplay are all excellent. And then there is a military vehicle that just goes through town for the final battle wrecking into everything. I really wish that machine played a little more into the finale than it did but it was still cool to watch. How exactly does somebody sneak onto a military depot? I know it’s Fred Williamson but he was without a moustache here.

And for the supposedly small town Bucktown has a very well-established downtown area that we see a great deal of. This is implied to be a very rural place that allows the law enforcement to do what they’re doing unnoticed but given the level of business that we see this doesn’t feel as rural as it perhaps should. I would think somebody up the governmental food chain would notice the abrupt change in the police department at the minimum.

Bucktown is a good action film. While it moves a little fast with the plot and there is some questionable logic, it is entertaining.