jammasta-1 "Hit!" tells the story of an FBI agent who goes rogue to avenge the death of his sister from a drug overdose. The revenge takes him to France with a rag-tag bunch of similarly affected characters - the elderly parents of a dead addict, a call-girl with the heroin habit, a dockyard worker whose wife was killed by a junkie, etc. The agent spirits them all to Canada, narrowly evading the grasp of FBI, which is (somehow) trying to kill him rather than arresting him. From there, following an apparently impromptu training routine, the death squad travels to Marseille to pull off the hit on a group of French businessmen (and perverts) who make their money on heroin peddling. Furie's film begins with a sequence that juxtaposes events in Marseille - where the drug boss fishes out a drug shipment outside the harbor - and the US - where a young Black guy drives a Stingray Corvette to pick up his girlfriend and then get some heroin to have a ball. The cuts are incongruous - when the Stingray first appears on the screen, it is completely unclear what it's doing there; when we're back in France, it's even more puzzling why. This lasts a few good minutes, until the girl (apparently) OD's. When Billy Dee Williams' character appears on the screen, the French sequences take a back seat, which makes it easier to understand their import, but the pace declines so rapidly you can find yourself yawning before the 20th minute. Williams' quest to locate potential co-conspirators begins in good style, but then he herds them onto a dilapidated boat anchored across the lake from Canada and goes after another name, which results in a 20-minute sidenote that fails to push the movie any further. Canada being the peace-loving country that it is, even the escape up north doesn't help. When the group eventually reach Marseille, even the hit itself takes a quite long while to gain momentum, eventually providing the only reasonably good 10 minutes of the entire 2-hour film. Such a waste of time... That said, there are positives. Williams' character enlists the help of a hot-headed 50-ish policeman who reconnoiters the Marseille circles, effectively doing *all* of the FBI guy's dirty work for him. Him, Richard Pryor's sharp-tongued dockworker, and the druggie girl are pretty much the only characters in the film that invite any interest, and Furie indicates that he sees their value. Scenes with the other characters, sadly including Williams', are routinely off-pace. Furthermore, the story itself suffers from lack of consideration. FBI may have been (and may still be) a rather unpleasant entity, but the film depicts the organization as pretty much the equivalent of a drug ring, with the head acting like a drug lord, and his subordinates resembling mob hitmen. Williams himself seems more like a contract killer than an agent - which suggests that this aspect of the main protagonist's backstory was only resolved at the very last stage of script-writing. Finally, the film does not really belong in the "blaxploitation" category - while it does share the premise with the far superior "Gordon's War," it features only a limited number of Black actors and doesn't address the specific cleavages of the Black community, including life in the ghetto. The dead girl and Richard Pryor aside, it's a fairly regular White Hollywood flick, only poorly conceived, executed, and edited.

Mr-Fusion I have to say, that image of a tailored Billy Dee Williams holding a rocket launcher is a beautiful sight; but blaxploitation this is not."Hit!" plays like a straightforward drama and its star, much closer to Bronson or Eastwood, brings the intensity as a grieving father whose daughter just O.D.'d. the movie has its eye on commentary as Williams and his DIY strike team take the drug war to the kingpins at the top. There are lighter moments - like the McDonald's product placement and Richard Pryor ad-libbing his end of the dialogue - and the pacing isn't perfect, but this is a pleasant surprise. I knew I'd like this, but for different reasons altogether. 7/10

Kilamofo Billy Dee's Daughter dies in heroin overdose. While beating the hell out of the dealer, he realizes that killing him won't solve the problem so he sets his sights high... At the top of the food chain.This film runs at about 2 1/2 hours and final "Hits" take about ten minutes, so the rest of the film is setup and much of that is implausible and unfortunately very slow to develop. Billy Dee Williams however was an electric presence, very hard to take your eyes off of while on screen. A very menacing cool. Richard Pryor... What can you say, the man is an artist. While watching the film you know he was given one line and the rest he made happen with his own special magic. Just watching the guy is enough to make you laugh.You would have expected more from the director of 'Lady Sings the Blues', but it was stellar considering the same gentleman also directed 'Superman IV'

John Seal ...and in fact, Hit! is an ambitious mixture of action and character study. At 134 minutes, one might suspect the director of overweening pride, but in fact there's little in the way of flab here. Billy Dee Williams proves that he should have been a major star and Richard Pryor is, as always, brilliant. Add a terrific supporting cast (Warren Kemmerling, Paul 'They Came From Within' Hampton, Sid Munson), a host of slimy French drug dealers, and a heaping dollop of revenge for a thoroughly satisfying blast of 70s-style crime dramatics.