Foxy Brown . Austin Chronicle . 12-29-97

Foxy Brown

DIRECTED BY: Jack Hill

REVIEWED: 12-29-97

Word on the street is, you don't mess around with Foxy Brown! She's sexy, she's bad, she'll give you the worst beating you ever had! Pam Grier is Foxy, bent on revenge against the mobsters who rubbed out her government-agent boyfriend. Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas plays her shifty brother, into the mob for 20 grand on a coke deal, who sells out Foxy's boyfriend to get the goons off his back. Director Hill (Spider Baby, Switchblade Sisters) keeps the plot going as fast as a speeding Sedan deVille (it seems like it's only about 45 minutes long) while the budget limitations give the overall look of a Mannix episode. There's grotesque Seventies fashions aplenty, a disgustingly kinky relationship between the nasty-looking mob boss and her gigolo boyfriend, big cars, big guns, big hair, and lots of wah-wah guitar soundtrack. Foxy uses her sturdy bra as a shoulder holster for her small caliber automatic (later concealing it in her Afro), opens up a king-size can of whupass in a lesbian bar and uses her considerable feminine charms to dupe some chump bad guys. Like Switchblade Sisters, there's a feminist element as well, as Foxy uses her brains as well as beauty and guts, biding her time, waiting to get all her ducks in a row before clinching her plan. Also, Foxy enlists the help of a Panther-esque "neighborhood committee" to provide the muscle to get her revenge on the baddies (another similarity to Hill's other film). Predictably, the story builds up to a torrent of violence and gunplay by the end (including death by airplane propeller). This is fun action sleaze from the classic era of drive-in blaxploitation films, driven by the no-nonsense direction of Jack Hill, and did well enough at the box office to help put the still-gorgeous Pam Grier on the map. Don't miss it.

--Jerry Renshaw

Other Films by Jack Hill
Coffy
Spider Baby

Film Vault Suggested Links
Death Rage
Pulp Fiction
Trainspotting

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