Mean Johnny Barrows (1976)

Fred Williamson plays Johnny Barrows, a down on his luck former GI who is pulled into a war between a couple of mafia families.  After being mustered out on a BS charge from the army Barrows returns to his old neighborhood and starts looking for a job.  But literally as soon as he gets off the bus he is mugged and loses everything that he had.  He goes from place to place, with the only job offered to him being muscle for one of the crime bosses.  After being taken advantage of yet again Barrows is finally convinced to help the Racconi family in their fight against the Da Vince family.  But even after winning the war and taking down the Da Vince family Barrows still can’t catch a break.  You have to see the end of this one, trust me.

Fred Williamson’s movies are hit and miss.  Either they kick much butt like Hell up in Harlem or they are awful like Death Journey.  Lucky for me Mean Johnny Barrows is a pretty damn good movie.  The action does take a while to get going, as Barrows needs to be properly beat down by life before taking the job with the mob.  But for me that works much better than just having the character give up too quickly.  Plus the movie uses that time to help establish the crime families and tosses a few interesting characters at you, including Elliott Gould in a blink and you’ll miss it role as a homeless professor and philosopher.  When the movie does get around to the action it is satisfying and pretty good.  Though a couple of times the movie does jump around and get “choppy”.  I think this is just some bad editing and seems to be in all of the movies that Williamson directed, including this one.  Should have hired a better editor.  The ending also is a real downer and doesn’t entirely make sense, but I liked what they were going for. 

I do want to talk a bit about the cast, which is surprisingly filled with some familiar faces.  In addition to the previously mentioned glorified cameo by Elliot Gould we also are treated to Roddy McDowell as one of the Da Vince boys.  I’ll admit that is was funny seeing McDowell, whom I’m a big fan of, trying to play a bad ass Mafioso.  Doesn’t really work, but he tries hard.  Stuart Whitman (Eaten Alive) is pretty good as one of the mob bosses.  Finally Fred Williamson is really good as Johnny Barrows, which is basically like every other character he has played.  So you know he is just being his bad ass self.   

The movie is put together pretty well.  The picture is decent and the sound is good.  After seeing some of the movies Williamson directed I was worried about this one, but it turned out all right.  I will admit that the fight scenes involving Williamson are funny as hell.  Really did he think he could do karate?  The best/least believable fight sequence is the one between Barrows (Williamson) and Da Vince (McDowell). 

This isn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen but if you are looking for a bit of Blaxsploitation fun then you can do a whole lot worse than Mean Johnny Barrows.  I recommend it.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2010 John Shatzer