Truck Turner and his partner Jerry are bounty hunters for bail bonds men. Turner has a reputation for being an intimidating and confident force and can command top dollar for the jobs nobody else is willing to take. When the job of retrieving pimp Gator Johnson turns sour, Tuner has to kill Gator and invokes the ire of his girl Dorinda. While Dorinda tries to hold her stable of girls together in a male dominated industry, she offers up a significant business share in her girls to the man who is able to kill Turner for her revenge.
I have taken recently to watching some Blaxploitation films mostly because I find the genre to be agreeably trashy and in a way the weaknesses can be accepted and almost enjoyed as part of the experience that you have come for. Trashily made, violent, tough black male leads, gorgeous females with lots of sass, funky soundtrack, solid action and unintentional laughs – all of these things sort of come with the territory. Truck Turner actually stands out as one of the more enjoyable of the genre, while still very much being a genre film with all the staples in place. The film is built on the usual sense of tough cool in the packaging and in the lead character and the plot pretty much does what you expect as a revenge plot provides plenty of gun battles and bright red blood squibs going off – none of it particularly thrilling but none of it dull either.
Where it actually benefits is in the casting. Hayes is not the best actor of course but he does have a lazy cool charm about him and he leads the film well. He is totally out-acted though by Nichelle Nichols who is not only sexy but is convincingly full of murderous rage – as others have said, it is a world away from her character on Star Trek but she really dominates the screen here with a marvellously over the top and driven house-mother harpie. Kotto is not quite as good but he is a very good presence and deserved to be used a bit better than he was. That said he still rocks most of his scenes and is rewarded with a memorable final scene. Weeks is funny, Chase is cute and beyond that everyone is par for the genre course, with plenty of bad hair and overacting in the men and lots of flesh in the women.
Truck Turner is still a genre film of course and it needs to be met on those terms but it does stand out as a good example of the genre – tough, cool, good performances, lots of pimp etc stereotypes and plenty of silly gun action. Far from being a great film, it is still a very good genre piece.
