Synopsis
John “Goldie” Mickens (Max Julien) and his partner Slim (Richard Pryor) are ambushed by rival gunmen in a junkyard. Two white detectives (Dan Gordon and William Watson) arrive on the scene and debate whether to kill Goldie or arrest him. Six years later, Goldie is released from prison and returns to Oakland. He visits his mentor, the Blind Man (Paul Harris) who advises Goldie, “Pimpin’s big business. And it’s been goin on since the beginning of time. And it’s gonna continue straight ahead until somebody up there turns out the lights on this small planet. Can you dig it?”

Goldie catches up with an ex-girlfriend (Carol Speed), an “outlaw” turning tricks to pay the bills. She implores Goldie to manage her. Goldie’s militant brother (Roger Mosley) is a political organizer dedicated to running pimps and drug dealers out of the community, but Goldie notifies him that he has some things he wants to do. He gets himself cleaned up, buys some new clothes and decides, “to be the meanest mack who ever lived. They’re gonna be talkin about Goldie like they used to talk about Jesus!”

Rising to such success that he is awarded “Mack of the Year” honors at the annual Players Ball in Oakland, trouble arises when Goldie’s former employer Fatman (George Murdock) gets word of his protégé’s success. He demands Goldie come back to work for him. The vile detectives who busted Goldie are also intent at taking him down. To get out of the game with his life intact, Goldie turns to his brother for help.

Production history
Robert Poole was an ex-con who – according to legend – wrote a 40-page treatment for a movie idea he had on prison toilet paper. His story concerned an ex-con who returns to the streets to become the greatest pimp of all time. Titled Black Is Beautiful, Poole ultimately approached producer Harvey Bernhard with his idea. Fascinated with how a man could “control a bitch’s mind,” Bernhard hired a young filmmaker named Michael Campus, who had shot a few television documentaries for ABC, to direct.

Max Julien was the first actor Bernhard approached. Julien had written the screenplay for Cleopatra Jones and was looking to direct, but Bernhard gave him carte blanche to rewrite the script. Traveling to Oakland, Julien and Campus sought the help of the Ward brothers, four men who ran the city’s criminal underworld. Frank Ward agreed to take the filmmakers into his world, if they took him into theirs. In addition to being awarded a cameo in the film, Ward inspired the basis for Goldie’s character.

Frank Ward not only met with Julien to make sure the actor portrayed him correctly, but provided protection for the cast and crew. Trouble came when Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party – who ran the political side of black Oakland – felt the production had infringed on their turf. The Panthers rained bottles down on the crew on the first day of filming. Julien was friends with Newton and met with him to cool tensions, but before filming could be completed, Frank Ward was shot in the back of the head and killed.

The Panthers were blamed for the hit and without Ward’s protection, the filmmakers retreated to L.A. to finish the film. They dedicated The Mack to Frank Ward, but as if to show who really ran Oakland, Huey Newton insisted the premiere benefit the Panthers’ milk fund in the city. Critics decried the film as “Blaxploitation” at the time, but it’s since come to represent ‘70s style finer than perhaps any other movie. Scenes later showed up in True Romance and Friday, and informed Snoop Dogg’s entire career.

Opinion
Other than the clothes, the cars and the music – Willie Hutch wrote and performed nine classic tunes, including “I Choose You,” “Theme of The Mack” and “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out” – one reason The Mack has endured is the message at its core. The tension between those seeking self-sufficiency through political change and those pursuing criminal enterprise – tension in the Black community that plagued the production – is richly conveyed in the relationship between Roger Mosley and Max Julien’s very memorable characters.

The movie is still a shoot ‘em up straight from the pages of Iceberg Slim and tends to get somewhat repetitive, but it also has an improvisational charge to its dialogue, thanks largely to Richard Pryor. Instead of feeling artificial, The Mack plays like a documentary feature on Oakland of the early ‘70s. And despite a comically low budget, nearly every scene is infused with a love for movies. Goldie’s makeover – where Julien throws dollar bills into the air and is captured in slow motion – is a joy.

Bill Gibron at DVD Verdict writes, “The Mack is indeed a neo-realistic, honest story of one man’s journey through the dark world of organized street crime. It is also incredibly preachy, disjointed, and esoterically insular … People seeing this film without a thorough knowledge and understanding of the jargon and manner of 1970s black society will probably find their head reeling from the excessive use of street jive and indecipherable pimp code names.”

“I see on the one hand a rather racist film filled with stereotypes and narrow attitudes, while on the other hand, Goldie maintains that a sense of empowerment and justice, however skewed, is served. A good argument for both stances could be made, but watching this film today, the blended themes are awkward and unnerving and bring back thoughts of how far we still have to go in terms of equality for everyone,” writes Ryan Cracknell at Apollo Movie Guide.

Jeffrey Anderson at Combustible Celluloid writes, “One of the seminal works of blaxploitation is actually a bit softer and more thoughtful than it may appear. This is partly thanks to the low-key, sleepy-eyed performance by Max Julien as ‘Goldie’ … The film is full of odd little touches, such as a man attacked by rats in the trunk of a car or battery acid injected into the veins of another. But in-between the (white) director Michael Campus employs an almost improvisatory approach, it’s as if the actors weren’t even aware the camera was running.”