Baadasssss! Special Edition

Product Description Critics and audiences alike have gotten behind Mario Van Peebles' candid portrait of his father Melvin's struggle as a young, black director during the society-shifting early '70s. Determined to make a film that matters, Melvin (played by son Mario) deals with two-faced backers, a rag tag crew, threatening creditors and various shades of Hollywood hypocrisy. Obsessed and with everything on the line, including his failing eyesight and family, his only choice is to stick to his guns and do whatever it takes to get his neo-blaxploitation epic Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song to the audience for which it was envisioned. The real-life father and son dynamic brings an intimacy to this inspiring and often hilarious tribute to the father of black cinema. The result is a seamless layering of entertaining drama and poignant documentary that mirrors itself from every angle and never loses itsedge. Amazon.com Baadasssss! is actor-writer-director Mario Van Peebles's best film since 1991's New Jack City; more accurately, it is a mature and often dazzling work beyond previous expectations of Van Peebles' skills as a filmmaker. Certainly he was inspired by the autobiographical subject: The making of his father's 1971, independently produced Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, in which young Mario made his acting debut amidst a frantic, high-pressure operation that paid off when African American audiences embraced the film. Playing his ownhard-nosed dad, Melvin Van Peebles, the younger talent explores--honestly, but not ruthlessly--Melvin's rocky relationship with an ever-disappointed Mario (played by Holes' Khleo Thomas), but he also portrays the elder man as a stubborn idealist against a backdrop of Hollywood cynicism about black entertainment. The film is a whirlwind of action and innovative scenes recreating personal history but without the insistent discursiveness of memory. With Nia Long, Ossie Davis, and Saul Rubinek. --Tom Keogh