Dante’s Weekend Double – Week Three Of “Wrath Of August” Brings Two Throwbacks, ‘Point Blank’ And ‘Foxy Brown’
We stay in the past this weekend (like all good revengers), and bide our time with a “Double” shot of old-school payback.
Point Blank (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
The first round in the chamber belongs to legendary hardass, Lee Marvin, as the vengeful crook Walker in this OG banger from 1967 based on the 1963 novel The Hunter by Richard Stark.
Walker agrees to help his “friend” Mal Reese (John Vernon) pull off a big heist on Alcatraz to pay off the local syndicate dubbed “The Organization”… only to be betrayed by Reese when the payoff isn’t as large as expected.
Reese shoots Walker, leaving him for dead on The Rock – then he runs off with his wife, Lynne (Sharon Acker), and his cut of the dough ($93K). Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t enough to put the bad dog down for good.
No time is wasted as Walker is quickly back on his feet, and starts on an epic warpath paved with lead.
It’s safe to assume that most readers know Lee Marvin from how hard their dads would simp for the rough old cowboy, and many of his ilk, but with good reason.
Lee didn’t play back in his heyday, and aging did little to soften his demeanor. He’s pissed off (also more than likely drunk) from the beginning of this movie all the way to its climax, and one can’t help but root for this villain the whole time.
Point Blank is available on TUBI.
Foxy Brown (American International Pictures)
No revenge fantasy is complete without the one and only Pam Grier in her most famous role from 1974, Foxy Brown. She reunites with writer/director Jack Hill for the action-packed follow-up to her breakout role in Coffy from the previous year which was intended as a sequel, but that changed at the last minute. Studios got to studio…
In this non-sequel, she plays Foxy Brown (and not Flower Child Coffin), who’s out for blood when drug dealers whack her undercover Fed boyfriend after her two-bit hustler brother, Link, exposes the boyfriend to save his own yellow-bellied skin.
It’s safe to say that we all have that one family member who would rack up a $20K gambling debt to the local crime syndicate, just to sacrifice a lamb in order to weasel their way out of it, and it is this weakest Link which sets off this violent chain of events.
Foxy connects the murder to a human trafficking operation posing as a modeling agency that services cops, judges, and politicians. Basically, it’s a pig pen full of sex slaves who are strung out on heroin.
Posed as a prostitute, she infiltrates the operation to take out the pushermen and their mob bosses while using her “black belt in barstool” on anyone who wants to talk tough because, to Foxy, vigilante justice is as American as apple pie.
Foxy Brown is one of the most well-known Blaxploitation films, and the character has become the archetype for the badass women of the genre. It can seen in movies like TNT Jackson, Giro 6, Undercover Brother, and of course Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 homage Jackie Brown (also featuring Grier), but for now check out the original on Pluto TV.
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