Down 'n Dirty has Williamson reprising his role as Dakota "Dak" Smith, LAPD detective who knows how to get the job done and get the girl. When his partner is killed on a bust, something about it doesn't smell right. His boss, Charles Napier, thinks he needs to let it go, so he does, the credits roll, and we all live happily ever after--or Dak doesn't listen and he keeps digging, and when he digs, he ruffles feathers. But the heat he gets isn't anything he can't handle. When the corruption goes all the way to the top, it just means they have that much further to fall when Dak takes them down.
There are a lot of ways to go with this one, but for me, I'm looking at it as a Fred Williamson fan. On that score, this really delivers the goods. Williamson is in most scenes, and he delivers almost every time he's onscreen. When I see Williamson on the cover, that's all I need. From there, we do have a lot of smaller parts by bigger names: I think Busey and Carradine don't show until after the hour mark, Andrew Divoff comes in a bit after that, and Sam Jones only has one scene. Beverly Johnson, Bubba Smith, and Charles Napier have a little more time than that, but not much. Again, I'm okay with all of that if the Williamson delivers, and it does here. On the other hand, if Williamson alone doesn't make a movie for you, there's a lot in this to take issue with. It's pretty standard fare, not a huge amount of action, and the plot doesn't have a lot of suspense or intrigue in it. With that in mind, this is probably for Williamson fans only, and maybe a bit further down the list after you've seen some others first--but it does deliver for Williamson fans, that's for sure.
Our plan to get more Williamson on the site was derailed a bit by me having trouble getting posts by anyone on, and now I'm down to only 1 a week. Maybe a plan to do one Williamson every other month while I'm at this lower output is the way to go, but at the very least, I need to keep making him a priority. This is one of his own productions and he directs it, so a lot of times I'm not as tough on those because I appreciate what he's trying to do overall when he makes his own films. On top of that, his screen presence is so fantastic, I always love watching him get after it. We're now at 19 Williamson films on the site, and when I look at his IMDb bio, I'm seeing anywhere from 30-40 more that we could do, so we have a long way to go to exhaust his filmography. With me close to finishing up guys like Dolph and Seagal, there will be more room to get more Williamson on here, which I think we'll all be a lot better for.
Movies like this with a big cast are often gold for the DTVC, because one post can get a bunch of tags for people. It can be fool's gold though, because if the film doesn't deliver on those names, I'm left with a bad post on a film no one cares about. I think for a lot of years that's what plagued guys like Busey, Carradine, and Williamson, is they often did these kinds of movies where they had small cameos and got to have their names splashed across the cover, and I got to say I did a Busey film or a Carradine film. This was one of the rare occasions where the gamble paid off, because at least there was plenty of Williamson in the film, so the smaller Busey and Carradine roles were mitigated by that. I'll talk a bit more about the Busey, but the Carradine is a total sit-down role with him in (I think) two scenes in a limo barking out orders as the main baddie. Nice work if you can get it, right?
Now for the film's Abusive rating. This is a unique one, because we're rating based on quality over quantity--which is odd, because often the quality of the Busey is determined by the quantity. Anyway, I'm giving this a 5 on the Abusive Scale, because there isn't a lot of Busey, but what we got was a lot of fun. Look at that picture below: a woman at his place is about to go down on him, but while she's undoing his robe, he makes that face. What was that? Did she suddenly reveal she has spiked, metal teeth? Did Busey just remember he left the iron on? Did he realize forgot to tape Reba? Whatever the reason, it was pure Abusiveness, and that alone almost earned the entire 5 I gave this. Gary Busey is perhaps our greatest national treasure.
Finally, this movie has a pretty nice Williamson soundtrack, but I didn't realize how nice until I saw that The Dells were one it, as in "Stay in My Corner", "Oh What a Night", and "The Love We Had Stays on My Mind" The Dells. I looked into it some, and they actually performed on the Original Gangsters soundtrack as well, so Williamson had already worked with them. It's a very rare thing on our site that we get a group of that caliber performing on the soundtrack--it's rare that we do movies that even have soundtracks--so I wanted to spotlight it.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this free on Tubi here in the States, and I think it's also available on Prime. For Williamson fans, I think it's a fun time; for people who aren't as big a fan of his, there may not be enough there--but seriously, who isn't a big fan of Williamson?
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0253056
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