Synopsis
Goldie returns from five years at the state pen and winds up king of the pimping game. Trouble comes in the form of two corrupt white cops and a crime lord who wants him to return to the small time.
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Cast
- Max JulienGoldie
- Don GordonHank
- Richard PryorSlim
- Carol SpeedLulu
- George MurdockFatman
- Dick Anthony WilliamsPretty Tony
- Terrible TomHimself
- Ted WardHimself
- Frank WardHimself
- Roger E. MosleyOlinga
Recommendations
- 83
The A.V. Club
From its inception, The Mack had more on its mind than delivering a blaxploitation film, a label director Michael Campus always resisted. He shouldn’t have. His film is one of the finest examples of the genre, a smartly executed and deeply ambitious story of crime, corruption, and prostitution, shot on location in Oakland, California. - 80
Village Voice
It is almost perfect as escapist entertainment -- as a carefully schematized synthesis of fantasies for black audiences. [03 May 1973, p.81] - 75
The A.V. Club
The Mack certainly wasn't the first film to invite audiences to identify with a gleefully transgressive antihero, but its combustible take on sex, class, capitalism, and race made it an important touchstone not only for black film, but also for hip-hop culture. - 70
The Observer (UK)
Incoherent, idiotic and exhilarating. [28 Apr 1996, p.16] - 60
TV Guide Magazine
The Mack is lacking in narrative drive and logic, but offers an entertainingly exploitative portrait of a self-made gangster. - 30
The New York Times
Even as action melodrama of a Shaft sort, the film is inept, so confused that occasionally it seems surreal.
