Hit!

Billy Dee Williams stars as rogue American agent Nick Allen, who puts together a civilian strike team with personal stakes in the war on heroin in this 1973 action thriller that comes across like a reworking of The French Connection via The Dirty Dozen—complete with cross-cutting between the detective work and training stateside and the machinations of the drug trade in Marseilles. Despite its conventional crime-caper trappings, Hit! offered Williams a rare African-American lead in a mainstream action film of the era (rather than the low-budget “blaxploitation” titles cranked out for drive-ins and urban theaters). Richard Pryor, better known at the time as a boundary-pushing comedian than an actor, gets second billing (although his part is small) as former Navy engineer Mike Willmer, who signs on to avenge the death of his wife, with the rest of the band of oddballs and misfits filled out by Gwen Welles as a junkie prostitute, Warren J. Kemmerling as a cranky New York cop, Paul Hampton as a college professor, and Janet Brandt and Sid Melton as an elderly Jewish couple with criminal skills. Canadian director Sidney J. Furie shot the film largely on location in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Marseilles, bringing a little charge to the nicely timed hit-squad finale—but only a little. Of minimal interest beyond fans of Williams and Pryor (and likely to annoy those who will notice the inordinate number of typos in the subtitles during the French-language scenes), this is an optional purchase, at best. (S. Axmaker)