Year:  1972
Rating: 8.0

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I am not sure if 110th Street has as much meaning now as it did in 1972 or whether people from outside of NYC would know of its significance. I learned the hard way back in 1978. I was visiting a friend at night who lived on 96th street and when I got the local subway to go home I took it the wrong way and ended up on the platform at the 110th street station. Within 2 minutes I was mugged by four black teenagers. One of them was caught by the cops and I still recall what the cop said to him. "So how tall are you?". "6'2''" - "By the morning you will be 6'5"". And that was the last I ever heard of it. In the film Brother from Another Planet, the alien is taking the same subway up to Harlem and is told by someone "Here is a magic trick. I will make the white people disappear at the next stop". 96th street. 110th was the dividing line between white and black New York City.


This is a terrific pulsating crime film driven by the beat from Bobby Womack who composes a great soundtrack. It is 1972 NYC to the core - gritty, rough, crooked, dirty, unmerciful full of broken down tenement buildings and broken down lives. Three black robbers take a chance and break in on a drug transaction between blacks and the Mafia and end up killing everyone and taking the money. From that point on it is a tense chase between the cops (Anthony Quinn as an older corrupt, racist and brutal cop and Yaphet Kotto the new type of cop) and the Mafia (Anthony Franciosa) teaming up with the black gang to find the killers. It gets ugly. The final rooftop shootout is terrific.


What makes the film really work though is that the filmmaker takes the time to flesh out all the characters involved; especially the three robbers - so that when things take their natural course they all seem real and human. I am surprised that I never saw this before being a big fan of Womack and the theme song but 46 years later this holds up remarkably well.