Blaxploitation Education: That Man Bolt

The crossover between Blaxploitation and martial arts movies begins.

That Man Bolt
Written by Quentin Werty and Charles Johnson
Directed by Henry Levin and David Lowell Rich
1973

At the same time as the Blaxploitation genre was on the rise in the United States, martial arts movies were also getting more and more popular in Asia. The early 1970s were the heyday of Bruce Lee, who only made a few movies but still revolutionized the kung fu genre in Hong Kong. At the same time, stars like Sonny Chiba were making karate movies in Japan. As the exciting action coming out of Asia was becoming more well-known, it was only a matter of time before the people making scrappy, low-budget action and crime movies in the U.S. took notice and arranged for some crossover appeal.

That Man Bolt isn’t the first Blaxploitation movie to feature martial arts. Jim Kelly made a brief appearance as a karate teacher in Melinda, giving the main character some training so he could beat up the white guys who were antagonizing him. There were a few scenes here and there in which heroes encountered (and defeated) Asian characters who used a little bit of kung fu. And you could argue that Kelly’s supporting turn in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (which came out earlier in 1973) counted as a Blaxploitation-ish character. But I think That Man Bolt may be the first movie in which the main character is known to have martial arts skills, while also serving as a story that treats this form of fighting as a cool example of badassery rather than a gimmick used by supporting villains.

I don’t know if Fred Williamson was the best guy to introduce this type of fighting to American audiences, but he’s the one we got. He’s athletic enough to sell some of the moves, even if the movie has to cheat a bit during fight scenes, using lots of quick cuts to oversell the impact of punches and kicks. Fortunately, he maintains an aura of cool throughout, and while he’s not necessarily believable as what an old martial arts master describes as “the best student I ever had,” he’s still a good action hero, so it’s okay if the reality of the movie conforms around him so that he can come out on top.

We’re introduced to Williamson’s character, Jefferson Bolt, while he’s being held in a prison in Macau, spending his time there practicing karate moves. A British guy shows up to spring him and bring him back to his fancy apartment (he comments that the rent must cost several thousand dollars a month, and Bolt corrects him by informing him that he owns the building). We learn that Bolt makes money working as a courier, and he’s being tasked with transporting one million dollars in cash from Hong Kong to Mexico City, traveling through Los Angeles. And he’s not allowed to refuse the job, since the British guy’s boss had arranged for him to be arrested and held in prison for a week, then spent that time going through Bolt’s apartment until finding and breaking into a hidden safe that contained several passports under different names. Since those documents could get Bolt in trouble with the local government, he won’t get them back until he completes the delivery.

Fortunately, Bolt is savvy enough to spot a setup, so he arranges to have a guy from U.S. Customs come and certify the money before it is transported into the United States. This freaks out the presumably criminal suits who are arranging the transaction, so they try to have Bolt killed as soon as he arrives in L.A. He gets the drop on them though, using some karate skills to disarm them in the airport bathroom and then stealing the car they brought for him. After a chase, which takes a detour through the L.A. river (because any car chase in L.A. apparently has to go through there), he loses them and decides to investigate the car’s owner, which, according to the registration, is a company called Casino Enterprises operating out of Las Vegas.

This leads him to head to Vegas and look up a friend who is the head of a casino that turns out to be owned by that same company. While he’s there, he also hooks up with an old girlfriend named Sam (Teresa Graves, who is introduced singing a nice rendition of the Tom Jones song “She’s a Lady”). Unfortunately, they get interrupted mid-coitus by an assassin, and while Bolt avoids being killed and manages to take out the guy by using a broken mirror shard as an improvised throwing star, Sam gets killed in the crossfire. So now Bolt is not just trying to figure out who is targeting him, he’s out for revenge.

To make a long story short, he eventually returns to Macau and learns that the person behind everything is a criminal mastermind named Kumada (Satoshi Nakamura). He then goes about antagonizing the guy, disrupting his operations, and baiting him into violence, eventually leading to a showdown in which he’ll have to fight another student of his karate master. That guy, known as Spider (Ken Kazama, who was also in Sonny Chiba’s The Street Fighter), isn’t quite the threat he’s built up as, but he provides a decent fight. But this is still an American action movie, so unlike a Chinese kung fu movie that would require a lengthy fight in which the hero’s mettle is truly tested before he prevails, Bolt defeats him pretty quickly and decisively. We don’t get the full experience of a martial arts movie, but at least we get some entertaining feints in that direction.

Fortunately, the movie as a whole serves as a highly enjoyable opportunity for Fred Williamson to display his charm. He moves through this world with confidence, sure that he can take on any challengers and come out on top. And he gets lots of chances to do so, being constantly beset by attackers and usually using punches, kicks, and throws to take them all out (and even some nunchucks in one scene). At one point, he gets kidnapped and taken to a fireworks factory where the bad guys use acupuncture to torture him, and you better believe that his escape involves setting off all the fireworks. After a conversation with Kumada in which the crime lord promises to pay Bolt what he’s owed before Chinese New Year, since that’s when Asian people pay their debts, he charms Kumada’s girlfriend (Miko Mayama), sleeps with her, and leaves a message of “Happy New Year” written on her back in lipstick.

Everything works great, and Williamson is always ready with a quip or a display of tough-guy bravado. This movie really cements his position as one of the foremost Blaxploitation heroes. I do wish there had been a little bit more of the social commentary that I’m always looking for in Blaxploitation films, but aside from one racial slur that a dumb thug throws out before getting humiliated, we don’t get very much of that. However, there is the undercurrent of an idea that Bolt is continually underestimated by others, whether they may be crime lords or government authorities who are trying to coerce him into doing their bidding. But as with the other leading men of Blaxploitation, he’s too cool to even worry about that nonsense. He’s happy to demonstrate his superiority through his actions, and he looks pretty good while doing it. That’s something that most anyone can aspire to.

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
Cool Breeze
Melinda
Slaughter
Hammer
Trouble Man
Hit Man
Black Gunn
Bone
Top of the Heap
Across 110th Street
The Legend of N***** Charley
Don’t Play Us Cheap
Shaft’s Big Score!
Non-Blaxploitation: Sounder and Lady Sings the Blues
Trick Baby
The Harder They Come
Black Mama, White Mama
Black Caesar
The Mack
Book of Numbers
Charley One-Eye
Ganja & Hess
Savage!
Coffy
Shaft in Africa
Super Fly T.N.T.
Scream Blacula Scream
Cleopatra Jones
Terminal Island
Gordon’s War
Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off!
Detroit 9000
Hit!
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
The Slams
Five on the Black Hand Side
The Black 6
Hell Up in Harlem
I Escaped From Devil’s Island
Blackenstein
The Bad Bunch