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All-American race car mania is alive and well in this excellent Jeff Bridges movie, a true biographical story researched by Tom Wolfe. Junior Johnson needs a future beyond running moonshine for his father, and finds it climbing the rungs of success in the stock car racing game. This may be the most satisfying saga of its kind, and it helped prove that Bridges was a star.

The Last American Hero

Region ? Blu-ray See Below

Explosive Media

1973 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date March 28, 2019 / Der letzte Held Amerikas / Available at Amazon.de

11.92 Euros Starring: Jeff Bridges, Valerie Perrine, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Gary Busey, Art Lund, Ed Lauter.

Cinematography: George Silano

Art Director: Lawrence G. Paull

Film Editors: Robbe Roberts, Tom Rolfe

Original Music: Charles Fox

Written by William Roberts from stories by Tom Wolfe

Produced by John Cutts, William Roberts

Directed by Lamont Johnson

Catching up with older Jeff Bridges movies is never a bad idea,...

Cult director Larry Cohen’s sophomore feature, Black Caesar gets a Blu-ray treatment courtesy of Olive Films. One of two bona fide Blaxploitation efforts Cohen made with Fred Williamson before lurching into the upper echelon of cult genre with his notable guerilla techniques, this basic reworking of 1930s gangster films, (borrowing from items such as Mervyn LeRoy’s iconic presentation of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar) displays a bit more integrity in its characterizations than many of these exploitation efforts lack. Reworking a familiar bildungsroman trajectory, Cohen positions his protagonist as an opportunistic product of his environment, leaving us with a moral uncertainty as his hero is completely consumed, an inevitable result of continued sustenance from the gutter. By today’s standards, it’s incredibly problematic rendering of urban certainties has the tendency to repulse, and yet Cohen instills Williamson with a bit of presence and dignity often lacking...

The gangster genre’s central protagonist (antagonist?) is conspicuous in his journey from street kid to street king by coveting the finest fabrics and tailoring that money can buy. He becomes a vain, petty man destroyed by inability to reconcile his old simpler world with the politics of his new one. It is no accident that most of the principal characters in gangster films are minorities, symbolising a detachment from society and upending of the American dream. He/she can be as rich and powerful as he/she wants, but for those born on the wrong side of the tracks (i.e. minorities, if conforming to the genre model), the only way to fulfil this dream is through crime.

Many blaxploitation films take this same storyline as positive reinforcement of the late 1960s Black Power movement. These low-budget movies were made, for the most part, by African American males for African American males.