Starring Mario Van Peebles and Joy Bryant. Rating unavailable.

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The true golden age of Hollywood stretched from roughly 1966 until about 1974. In the wake of both the Hays Code and the studio system, for the first and last time American directors were permitted to make movies as personal as those of their European and Japanese colleagues. With censorship rules in flux and trust in authority massively undermined by both Watergate and the Vietnam War, audiences were ready to listen to messages that didn't just kiss the butt of the status quo--providing the cinematic iconoclast was white, that is. For blacks, it was a rather different kettle of radical fish.

Baadasssss! is the story of the greatest exception to this rule. In the early 1970s, with tremendous personal sacrifice, Melvin Van Peebles made a movie aimed specifically at the African-American mass audience, paying particular attention to the part that was most politicized. That Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song turned into the most successful independent feature of 1971 was not just a miracle; it was a miracle called into being by an almost Nietzschean act of cinematic will.

The making of Baadasssss! is, in a way, almost as unusual as the creation of the movie that it celebrates. Mario Van Peebles, the film's writer, director, and star, is also Melvin's son, and his childhood self (played by Khleo Thomas) is a character in the film who must interact repeatedly with Mario/Melvin. This extraordinarily close family connection could have produced problems, but fortunately for everyone, the director's old man advised his son "not to make me too damn nice".

Indeed, with an unlit cigar eternally in his mouth and a Black Panther's fashion sense, Mario Van Peebles plays his dad as anything but too nice. To get his movie made for virtually no money, he snarls, bamboozles, and browbeats with the best of them. His story of a ghetto-bred "soul brother" who kicks the crap out of racist cops and lives to tell the tale was widely seen (by white producers, at least) as an irresponsible incitement to race riots and, as such, was targeted for early death.

What is perhaps most impressive about Baadasssss! is its sensitivity to time and place. Unlike most movies set in the 1970s, this one rings true in almost every respect, from hair and clothes to sexual and economic attitudes.

And as Melvin, Mario is almost frighteningly convincing, radiating the harsh authority that would eventually earn his father, among other hard-won accomplishments, the French Legion of Honour.

Baadasssss! ain't no jive-ass shit, man. Can ya dig it?