Name: Trouble Man
Genre: Blaxploitation
Released: 1972
Duration: 99 min

Trouble Man

Cool to the point of refrigeration, scored by Marvin Gaye the one time he ever bothered.

Robert Hooks plays Mr. T, a Los Angeles fixer so self-contained he barely raises his voice while the double-crosses stack up around him, and the film is happy to let him be the coolest man in every room. The plot is the usual blaxploitation machinery, a frame and a reckoning, handled with unusual restraint by director Ivan Dixon. What everyone actually remembers is the soundtrack, the only film score Marvin Gaye ever wrote, a loose funk suite that is better than the movie under it and completely relaxed about that. Hooks never became a star, which is a small injustice, because the character is as assured as anything in the cycle. Put the record on and let the film play behind it.

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No legal stream, rental or purchase that we could find in the usual regions. For films this obscure that is common, and availability changes, so it is worth checking again later.

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Written about

Blaxploitation, 1971 to 1975
Melvin Van Peebles caught gonorrhea on his own set, filed a workers' comp claim, and bought more film stock with the settlement. Four years later the studios had mined the audience out and moved on.

Filed alongside