Blaxploitation Education: Cool Breeze
Memorable characters, catchy dialogue, and a solid crime caper makes for an enjoyable entry in the genre
Cool Breeze
Written and directed by Barry Pollack
Based on the novel The Asphalt Jungle, by W.R. Burnett
1972
Most Blaxploitation movies took place in urban settings, and many of them involved some manner of crime. Of course, plenty of movies outside of the genre also have a criminal focus, whether they’re telling stories about bank robberies, con men, or mafia kingpins. But it’s worth noting that when focusing on Black people, especially those who live in the inner city, crime is nearly unavoidable. That’s not to say that Black people have any special propensity for criminal activity, but rather to point out that people living on the lower rungs of society who have had many opportunities closed off to them and who face regular mistreatment from the police often have no other option but to engage in illegal activity just to get by.
Cool Breeze is a crime movie that doesn’t necessarily focus on the plight of Black people and the societal forces that drive them to commit crimes, but it seems like that undercurrent is ever-present in the picture it paints of the urban environment of Los Angeles in the 1970s. It features all manner of Black crime, ranging from the diamond heist at the center of its plot to common street-level offenses like prostitution, bookmaking, and loan sharking, as well as higher-level offenses committed by respected authority figures, such as businessmen financing larcenous schemes or police captains leaning on the locals to pay bribes or get busted. One of the main characters is so sick of feeling beaten down by the white man that he just wants to put together enough money to fulfill the sadly small-scale dream of moving away from the city and returning to his rural hometown in Texas.
But that’s probably too dour of an assessment of this film, which isn’t really a sad morality tale about the tragic ends of criminal activity. For the most part, it’s an enjoyable romp about some brothers who try to get one over on The Man and potentially do some good for the Black community. Unlike some other Blaxploitation films, which were happy to have their heroes prevail rather than dying tragically, these guys generally fail in their efforts, but it’s pretty fun to watch them try.
We get two main characters here, as well as a few smaller players. One is Sidney Lord Jones (Thalmus Rasulala, who we just saw in Blacula), a career criminal who gets released from prison at the beginning of the film and begins to put together plans for a diamond heist that will net $3 million. The other main character is Travis (Jim Watkins), a former pro football player who has fallen on hard times and is constantly scrabbling to get by while barely avoiding the law. Their introductions make for an interesting contrast. Jones, after learning that he’s getting out of prison, struts through the cell block in a celebratory manner with a big grin on his face, puts on a nice suit, and takes a cab into town. Travis, on the other hand, gets spotted by some cops while walking down the street and chased through various alleys and side streets before he manages to get to the diner operated by his brother and lose the gun he was carrying so he can submit to an arrest and questioning (turns out they were bringing him in based on suspicions about a crime he had nothing to do with, but he ran because he would have been in trouble if they had found a gun on him).
Jones and Travis both end up going to a local bookie named Stretch (Sam Laws, a regular Blaxploitation bit player), with Jones looking to set up a meeting with someone who can finance his scheme and Travis trying to come up with enough money to pay off a failed bet. One is not exactly on top of the world, but he’s confident that he’ll be able to pull off his plans, while the other is at the end of his rope, begging for money wherever he can get it and just trying to get enough to leave his dispiriting circumstances. So of course they’re going to end up working together, but interestingly, they don’t really clash. Even when Travis seems to make mistakes that could jeopardize the scheme, Jones treats him as an equal and laments their bad luck. It’s a form of solidarity in which characters do the best they can to work together rather than double-crossing each other or trying to tear one another down.
Other players in the scheme include Mr. Mercer (Raymond St. Jacques, one of the leads from Cotton Comes to Harlem), a prominent Black businessman who agrees to finance Jones’ scheme. Jones tries to convince him to get on board by noting that the proceeds will finance a bank that will serve the Black community, but Mercer seems like he couldn’t care less; he just wants to make enough to keep up appearances as a rich guy with fancy accouterments and a young girlfriend that his wheelchair-bound wife can complain about. In fact, he even agrees to fence the diamonds once they’ve been obtained, which seems somewhat suspicious. Sure enough, we learn that he’s actually out of money and desperately needs some funds, and he’s planning to pull a double cross and take all the diamonds for himself.
As Jones puts together the plans for the heist, he hooks up with Roy (Rudy Challenger, another guy who will show up in future Blaxploitation movies), a safecracker who is also a local preacher. He’s excited to use a laser he’s been keeping stashed in the back office of his church (when asked if he can open a certain kind of safe, he says “We’re goin’ to the moon nowadays; I can open things that don’t have openings”). For their getaway driver and muscle, they decide to hire Travis and his brother, and the scheme is ready to go.
The heist itself mostly goes off as planned (the robbers wear masks with presidents’ faces, beating Point Break to the punch by a couple of decades), although a night watchman who stumbles into things gets off a couple shots and fatally wounds Roy. But after Mercer tries his double cross, which turns into a shootout, Jones and company are left with no way to unload the diamonds, and they can’t really do anything but go on the run, knowing that they’ll probably get tracked down and captured or killed. Once again, Jones seems almost happy-go-lucky as he heads out of town, while Travis, having taken a bullet in the exchange with Mercer, is left to limp away on the shoulder of his girlfriend, probably not long for this world.
The movie gets a bit muddled once the scheme goes awry and the plot sort of peters out anticlimactically. However, there are still plenty of enjoyable scenes and performances throughout. There’s a Black police captain (Lincoln Kilpatrick, who mostly showed up on TV during this era but would appear in a few other Blaxploitation movies) who seems to be playing the system, protected by the fact that he’s a self-described token minority in a position of authority. Early on, he pledges to help the rest of the force crack down on crime, but he just uses that as an opportunity to get fancy suit jackets and other perks from Stretch. Later, he unleashes some fury on Stretch, beating him up and wrecking his business in order to get him to name Mercer as the man behind the heist, and he manages to avoid being punished by his racist white superior officer by giving the man what he wants: his name mentioned in a TV interview. Like most of the other characters, he’s playing the game, doing whatever he can to get ahead.
The real pleasures of this movie are the colorful characters and enjoyable dialogue. There are plenty of great lines, with dialogue coming at such a rapid-fire pace that it’s hard to keep up. It makes for an interesting look at the Black underworld, featuring quite a few memorable turns in bit parts (including Pam Grier, credited as Pamela Grier, in one scene as a prostitute that Jones refuses to pay and who is smart enough to know that Mercer is full of shit). And it’s got a pretty great, funky score by Solomon Burke. If it hadn’t devolved into a fairly unsatisfying denouement and an abrupt ending that leaves too many questions about what exactly happened, I would call this a highly unappreciated gem, something close to a classic. As it is, it’s pretty damn enjoyable, and it makes for another incisive look at the limited options available to Black people at the time and the need for better avenues of success that will improve the community as a whole rather than enriching a few. At least, that’s what I’m taking away from it, even if I have to dig a little bit to uncover these ideas.
Blaxploitation Education index:
UpTight
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Watermelon Man
The Big Doll House
Shaft
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Super Fly
Buck and the Preacher
Blacula
MGM was "playing the game", too, making sure to get in some more Black action before the trend ran cold. And, obviously, via the title page, cashing in on earlier success.