Three the Hard Way

Directed by Gordon Parks Jr., Three the Hard Way follows Jim Brown’s Jimmy Lait, Fred Williamson’s Jagger Daniels, and Jim Kelly’s Mister Keyes as they team up to prevent a nefarious white supremacist (Jay Robinson’s Monroe Feather) from unleashing a poison that targets only black people. It’s a palpably ludicrous premise that’s employed to mostly watchable yet undeniably erratic effect by Parks Jr., as the filmmaker, armed with Eric Bercovici and Jerrold L. Ludwig’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced actioner that benefits substantially from its top-notch, charismatic performances and proliferation of entertaingly larger-than-life action sequences – with, in terms of the latter, Kelly’s introduction, in which he takes on a whole host of hapless cops, certainly ranking as an obvious high point within the proceedings. There’s little doubt, however, that Three the Hard Way does suffer from a midsection and second half that contains its fair share of lulls, including a hit-and-miss climax that isn’t quite as enthralling as one might’ve hoped, and yet the picture boasts a pervasively affable feel that ensures its missteps remain mostly easy enough to overlook – with the final result an unabashedly fun and silly endeavor that never entirely outstays its welcome.

**1/2 out of ****