Hit! (1973) User Reviews

Solid gold

[Mr-Fusion · 7/10 · 13 July 2017]

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

Better than your average black action flick....

[JohnSeal · 7/10 · 21 June 1999]

...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.

Under rated movie about the streets of 1970's

[wooseldad · 6/10 · 19 September 2018]

Good cast, good acting and an interesting story. Just poorly written script. I'm an older white guy that loves the genera of street crime stories... Enjoy the show !

Improbable ... incredibly long ... but worth a look .....

[merklekranz · 6/10 · 11 August 2016]

"Hit" is an interesting revenge on Marseilles drug kingpins film, that one can't help comparing to "French Connection 2". I found "Hit" to be the better film. It does require some patience though to sit through the entirely too long buildup to the all to brief, violent conclusion. Of course the whole recruiting of the "magnificent seven assassins" is improbable, but Williams laconic charm holds things together. If perhaps 30 minutes wound up on the cutting room floor, the movie definitely would have benefited. While the payoff may not quite live up to expectations, there are moments of clever violence, and the cast is likable, especially Richard Pryor's character, and the pair of "senior citizen killers". - MERK

Not Quite a Hit

[view_and_review · 6/10 · 5 December 2019]

When someone very close to him dies of a heroine overdose Nick Allen (Billy Dee Williams) seeks to make someone pay. His first stop was the street dealer that sold the drugs. While practicing his jabs and hooks on the drug dealer's face he had an epiphany: why not go to the source. Of course, that's not easy, so he had to put together a great plan and a team. The team was less than great, but it was all he could muster. Their destination: Marseilles, France.

The movie was a stretch but it was good at times. I liked the idea of the movie I just didn't like the execution. Assembling a group of very reluctant participants isn't the best way to assassinate big time drug dealers. But, that was the story line we were given and that's the route Nick took.

Hit!

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 6 October 2020]

Starring Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor. With a title called Hit! This has all the hallmarks of a 1970s Blaxploitation movie but that is a deception.

Nick Allen (Billy Dee Williams) is a federal agent who goes rogue when his teenage daughter dies of a heroin overdose.

Realising that getting the pushers is not enough and the US government not interested in the big fish who live a life of luxury France.

Allen organises his own team in secret. People who have suffered loss because of drugs. He trains them and takes them to Marseilles and they are at first unaware that this is not an official government sanctioned mission.

This is a revenge thriller with a black lead. Dee Williams is suave and smooth, cunning and resourceful. He uses devious tricks to recruit his team. Pryor has a straight role as Mike Wilmer, a welder whose wife was killed.

The film was influenced by The French Connection but also has elements of The Dirty Dozen. The finale reminded me of The Godfather. This was released by Paramount Pictures and at one point, a victim of a hit is in the cinema watching the French version of The Godfather.

Sidney J Furie directs without much panache although there are a few good setpieces. It is at times illogical and overlong. The film could easily had been 30 minutes shorter.

John Alonzo lends some distinctive cinematography and gives the film some style. Hit! has become an obscure film but it does have a good performance from Pryor who apparently ad libbed some of his lines. It also is an important movie in 1970s black cinema because it was not a blaxploitation movie but a revenge movie with two black actors.

Keep on trucking brother

[osloj · 7/10 · 22 January 2015]

Nice little flick that is long in run time and continues to interest you well into the ending. Using "The French Connection" (1971) as its role model, it's about a federal agent (played by wonderful actor Billy Dee Williams) who assembles a team of regulars to knock off some French heroin dealers. Yeah, it's absurd, but actually it is a slick little film that kept me interested all the way through.

Billy Dee Williams does a fine job, as he did in Brian's Song (1971) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Keep on trucking brother.

I wish that they would have given him more roles when he was younger, but they did not consider him profitable enough.

Oh yeah, Keep on trucking brother!

Nice little flick.

Good performances... Slow movie.

[Kilamofo · 5/10 · 23 May 2000]

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'

An avenger in France, cleaning up

[jgcorrea · 6/10 · 25 November 2019]

Director Sidney J Furie wasn't properly an auteur. Like so many filmmakers, he had to feed his family occasionally. But the man showed an interesting eye for unusual angles and semi-baroque perspectives in Ipcress File, Naked runner and The Lawyer during the 1960's. Hit! was just a bearable, a bit overlong thriller in which a Federal Agent recruits various people and trains them to destroy a drug ring.

good acting, good premise, bad plot/screenplay.

[Killakai · 5/10 · 14 March 2007]

This si the blaxploitation version of the French Connection.

A gov't agent's is devastated when his niece dies at age 15 of heroin overdose. As he pummels the dealer who sold it, (accompanied by the boyfriend who gave it to her whom he does nothing to), the dealer blabbers something about him being the low man on the totem pole, etc. Billy Dee agrees, doesn't kill him and decides to set his sights higher up the chain of command, in fact he sets the all the way at the top.

Not a bad premise, but the execution and plot in general is poor. This movie is 2 hours long and it is literally over an hour before this story begins to develop. He gathers a team of people who have had drugs affect their lives and he pulls some kind of bribe on all of them to have them participate in his scheme (a scheme which is left extremely vague until the end).

They travel to France where their plan is pulled off without a hitch, all of France's Heroin kingpins are murdered in various fashions. the good guys win, and we assume the US heroin trade has taken a major major hit.

This could have been a good movie, were it not for so much wasted time between the plan and the execution. With some reworking this could have been really good. The acting of all of the major players was really good even when their behavior seemed unrealistic, the actors did well. A movie like Gordon's War has a better plot, and better execution, and although Hit! is the more serious film with better acting, I'd say Gordon's War has much more replay value. Partly because Hit! is a more drama than action film, I expected it to be more realistic and it certainly was not. And there is no reason why 30 minutes could not have been cut out of this film, there are so many extra scenes in this movie that are redundant or don't push the story forward.

Skip "Traffic", Watch This Instead

[Sturgeon54 · 8/10 · 21 June 2005]

I had prepared a long in-depth comparison between this film and Steven Soderbergh's vastly overrated 2001 film - two films with similar subject matter of the U.S. War on Drugs, but unfortunately that review got erased. My basic point was that Soderbergh's film purported to be a serious, realistic saga on the conflict between the U.S government and the illegal Mexican drug system, but was in fact a collection of pretentious, meandering plot lines, with the plot line involving the U.S. Drug Czar's cocaine-addict honor student daughter being the most ridiculous. That film also reached no definite conclusion about the U.S.'s War on Drugs.

Conversely, the now-obscure film "Hit!" on the surface appears to be one of many blaxploitation/vigilante movies from the 1970s but successfully rises above its pulp origins to become a semi-serious commentary on U.S. drug policies with stellar acting from Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, Warren Kemmerling, and virtually everyone else. Williams carefully organizes a diverse "A-Team"-like group of misfits to destroy the French heroin cartel and its importation into the U.S. following the death of his daughter from a fatal overdose. Though often witty, this film never loses sight of the seriousness of the drug problem, and in fact reaches a very definite conclusion: the U.S. government really could stop the drug trade if it wised-up, went after the people at the top rather than small-time pushers, and "got off its ass," as a resigned Williams states at the end.

Though other reviews criticize the film's length (which is just over two hours), I enjoyed director's Furie's decision to carefully develop all the minor characters here. This movie has excellent production values. As usual, Furie is a master at setting up scenes visually, and the final assassinations prove to be very suspenseful and impressive. This is a film that deserves a second look, and has earned my recommendation.

He'll get what he wants, one way or another.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 19 January 2024]

If fighting fire with fire will get results, then government agent Billy Dee Williams is going use it, and what he wants is revenge, not against the pushers, but those who supply. He reasons that the pushers are victims top, and it's the top men in the mob who need to pay for overdose deaths from heroine. His daughter, Richard Pryor's wife, Sid Melton and Janet Brandt's son. Gwen Welles is an addict he has an affair with, supplying her with the stuff to get him to join their group to snuff out the men behind the iron gates who call the shots.

Superb performances by everyone but it does sag in the middle, exploding in a scene where Welles, going through withdrawals and nearly dies. Williams becomes shockingly cold with everyone as he seems willing to let her die, bringing back tearful flashbacks for the older Melton and Brandt. Even when playing it sinister, Williams (here in his best screen role) is extraordinarily charismatic.

Watching the hits take place becomes quite nail biting, as they're dealing with some pretty powerful men (and one woman), with Pryor showing once again how good a funny man can be in drama, first declaring his anger over his wife's death to Williams, and then attacking the person responsible. Melton, another comic (best known now as Estelle Getty's late husband in flashbacks on "Golden Girls"), also gets to show his dramatic skills. The direction of Sidney J. Furie outside of the middle drudge, is excellent. Great location footage also adds enjoyment, but as someone who has seen the results of drug abuse, the satisfaction is in watching a cartel be destroyed.

Badly paced, ponderous, incongruous, unedifying

[jammasta-1 · 4/10 · 27 January 2018]

"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.

Great movie and great cast

[willandcharlenebrown · 6/10 · 5 May 2021]

I wish the ended was a little different but hey, I'm not the director haha. Worth a watch. Richard Pryor did a great job as well.

A Bit Long but Still Manages to Entertain Fairly Well

[Uriah43 · 5/10 · 17 January 2022]

This film essentially begins in Washington D. C. with a high school girl named "Jeannie Allen" (Tina Andrews) dying after injecting some heroine provided by her boyfriend. Meanwhile, in France, the small group of people responsible for exporting the drugs to America are living the life of luxury with not a care in the world. At least, they don't have much to worry about at the present time. What they don't know, however, is that a rogue federal agent by the name of "Nick Allen" (Billy Dee Williams) has begun recruiting certain people in an effort to not only locate where the drugs that killed his daughter came from-but to kill everyone involved as well. Now rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was a decent film for the most part based largely on the solid performance of Billy Dee Williams. Admittedly, the film tends to run a bit long (134 minutes) and has a few rather slow scenes here and there. But even so, I found it to be entertaining enough for the time spent and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

Too slow and flabby

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 11 September 2023]

HIT! Is a surprisingly slow and meandering revenge story from 1973, directed by Sidney J. Furie who normally puts out more engaging fare. This one stars the up-and-coming star Billy Dee Williams as a guy grieving the death of his daughter from a heroin overdose. His path to revenge takes him all the way across to Paris, where he assembles a team of characters who are looking for their own revenge on the city's drug barons for various reasons. The best and most interesting of these is Richard Pryor who gives a typically intense performance even this early in his career. Sadly, the flabby running time and dearth of action means that this stalls when it should flow, and the last hour and a half in particular is quite excruciating.

Hit! is like cold steel through the lower intestine.......

[charleslennonbaker · 8/10 · 19 August 2008]

the plot is awful but the premise is heart felt. Substitute heroine for any vice or society's many ills and that's the "bag guy(s)" in this movie.

The Hit! takes a little from each previous genre during the '70's and late '60's and twists them to such an extent that if the movie was made 40 years prior to it's release date or 30 years after, it would, could and still stands up to the test of time.

You can see elements of the dirty dozen/guns of the Naverone themes. James Bond/"Get Carter" char. Shaft/inner city turmoil etc.

I initially saw bits of this movie at 0'dark thirty on USA channel about 13-14 years ago. It was just before the plan's 'plot' implementation. But What kept me spellbound was seeing Billy Dee holding what I believe was a Swedish K or M-36 "pulverizer" submachine gun! I mean Billy Dee?!? Mr. Cool!?! I'd never even seen him look mean! Forget about being a assassin. But their he was.

After 5 minutes I was hooked. I tried finding the movie in the stores but to no avail. I asked every retailer I could find if they had the movie. Most thought I was DELUSIONAL. They'd never heard of the movie or couldn't order it.

Finally 5 years ago the movie came on AMC of all places and I could finally watch the movie in it's entirety. I wasn't disappointed. A sequel or a remake would be perfect write about now.

The "Hit" is on!

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 8 September 2016]

***SPOILERS*** Overlong and somewhat boring movie that takes forever to get to the point or "Hit" about this disgruntled US Government Agent Nick Allen who's out to terminate the Marselle Franch drug cartel who's responsible for his 15 year old daughter Jennie's drug overdose. That's when her drug dealing boyfriend slipped her a sample to snort on while driving her home from school. Taking a 30 day forced vacation Nick assembled a group of former victims of drug abuse and whipped them into shape in his plan to wipe out the cartel that was, as it seemed, to be protected by the both local Marselle police as well as the US Government agency that Nick works for.

The movie go one for some two hours in Nick planning his "Hit" on the Marselle cartel at this out of the way and deserted fishing village outside Seattle Washington before he and the team embarks to France to get the job or "Hit" done. At one point Nick's squad of hit-men and women backed off on his plan feeling that it was too dangerous and mindless to carry out. That's until he had one of his team members former or recovering junkie Sherry Nielson who was hooked on heroin go cold turkey, by not giving her her daily fix, and about to kick off. That in preventing Sherrie from dying before their eyes had Nick's team change their minds and go along with him to sail, with him at the wheel, to Marselle and massacre the French cartel as well as it's enablers!

****SPOILERS**** It's when the "Hit" finally came into execution in the last 15 or so minutes of the movie we the audience finely got its monies worth with Nick & Co. doing their thing on the bad guys all over the city in a number of bloody rub-outs that shook up the local police who for years were unable, because of the law as well as pay-offs by the cartel, to get the job or "Hit" job done.. As for Nick he was given immunity from prosecution by his boss by keeping his mouth shut, in that he was a Government Agent, in not embarrassing the local police authorities in him or the US Government, who really had nothing at all to do with it, having done the job that they were unable or not willing to do.

Ahead of it's time: begging for a remake.

[holysimon · 10/10 · 23 May 2012]

This has come out on DVD in April 2012. I had been looking for this for a long time. I hadn't seen it in nearly 25 years and I am surprised how well it has aged.

So, here we are with a piece of cinema that was well ahead of it's time (and still his) as far as inter-racial relationships is concerned. Even Denzel has not had the intestinal fortitude to go where Billy Dee Williams has gone: falling in love with a gorgeous white woman in the person of Gwen Welles.

Sexy and tender: this would be exceptional in 2012, but it was done in 1973! Hit! is a great story that doesn't shy away from character development. It quietly builds itself in 135 short minutes.

Of course it has its flaws like all the B+ stuff, but boy would I like to see a remake of this.

It has all the ingredients of a Stallone flick: losers humbly redeem themselves doing extraordinary things in so brief instants where their whole existence must past in front of them.

It was like I knew - and fell in love with - every character.

A tour de force by Sidney Furie that would be difficult to duplicate using modern standards.

Still, I would love to see this one remade.

Very well done!

[juliaarea · 9/10 · 8 January 2012]

First viewing of this 70s movie: I was impressed with the depth of the characterizations. One feels in tune with each of the group's well defined personalities, in examining their weaknesses, strengths and limitations. It was if you knew the individual personally, what made them tick. As you grow with them, you believe as do they, that ordinary people can accomplish what they purpose. This diverse group of people brought shading and depth to the plot, drawing you into the events as they played out in an international setting. Tension and suspense is palpable with every individual character's actions. You feel the adrenaline and excitement as the plot builds to multiple crescendoes. Yes, plural! Timing becomes critical. A touch black hero-ish, a bit dated (hence a 9 rather than a 10)but so very well acted and clever that it holds one's attention throughout. Yes, it would benefit from a better format.

This film is terrific.

[zaba_53 · 10/10 · 9 September 2018]

Never saw it until I saw it on TV recently. Don't know where I was, but I don't even remember the title from back in the day, but I'm glad I found it now.