A movie I have to admit I was, and still am, very ambivalent about. I've enjoyed some of the blaxsploitation movies of the early 1970's-- particularly anything starring Pam Grier. Given the context of the times during which they were made and released and all that had transpired regarding the cinematic portrayal of blacks in the decades previous to their release (Butterfly McQueen, Hattie McDaniels, Stepin Fetchit, etc.), they were among the first close-to-mainstream movies to feature, as they often did, a smart, strong black hero...often a smart, strong black female hero. Unfortunately, they were exploitative movies to their core, often conceived of and controlled by rich white men, and they often pandered to the most negative stereotypes about blacks (and whites) imaginable. "The Mack" has a different, grittier look about it. It was filmed on the mean streets of Oakland, CA, and they look dark, nearly empty, and grim (Black Panther Huey Newton was supposedly peripherally involved in certain aspects of the film). Max Julien stars as the lead character, an ex-convict who decides to make his fortune as a pimp, or...as they're better known these days...a "player". Julien didn't impress me as a particularly skilled actor, but he does have a certain charisma about him that works, that makes the character seem effectively dangerous and authentic. His friend/partner is played by Richard Pryor. Pryor is always fascinating to watch on-screen, but he's not on-screen a lot here-- supposedly, his reputation was such that no one wanted to hire him and it was only at Julien's urging that he finally got the part. Don Gordon and the late William Watson (I remember him appearing on TV shows like "Gunsmoke" when I was a kid) play the evil white cops, George Murdock plays the evil white mob boss, and Carol Speed (she played the title role in "Abby"- a blaxsploitation rip-off of "The Exorcist" that's absolutely hysterical) plays one of the Mack's working girls. Apparently, a lot of the events in this film are based on real-life, and some of them are more disturbing than you might expect from an early 1970's blaxsploitation movie. Still, there are glaring flaws that a more skilled film-maker might have been able to overcome or make plausible. Women are treated like garbage; not surprising, considering the movie deals with pimps and prostitutes. In one scene, though, Julien is shown giving money to local kids, encouraging them to go to school and make something of themselves. In more adept hands, this scene could be seen as an ironic commentary on a criminal's distorted self-image, and how he desires others to view him, but the impression I was left with from "The Mack" was that we were actually supposed to unquestioningly admire Julien's actions as altruistic and selfless...no irony intended...which makes the scene almost comically absurd, ridiculous. Too, there's not much of a plot-line here; the story seems to meander around from incident to incident and I occasionally lost track of who was whom, and whether their relationship to Julien was friendly or antogonistic. Again, a skilled film-maker might have presented this as the uncertainty and treachery of the criminal underworld, the ambiguity of any relationship one holds in such a world, but I'm not sure that's what was intended here. I don't think anything was intended; I think it was flawed film-making. I don't want to imply that those involved in the making of this film were talentless hacks; there are moments here that work, and much of this low-budget film has an undeniably  guerilla-style-filmmaking potency. Unfortunately, it never is able to entirely transcend its blaxsploitation roots, and today can be seen as an interesting curio from a bygone era rather than the classic it might have been.