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But when some of them finally get around to seeing it, they get more than they bargained for.
From the beginning, Pelecanos writes, the audience sensed that there was something unsettling going on.
When it concludes, one character declares it boolshit but his more experienced companion corrects him.
That there was the real deal.
Classic blaxploitation films are often a combination of creative bullshit and the real deal sometimes within the same frame.
Then again, few such pairings do, as the 1972Super Flysopening moments make clear.
But really the opposite is true.
Nobody here has any other choice.
But for as often as he made inspiring songs, he didnt look away from the darkness.
Here, his songs sometimes seem to be providing a thematic counterpoint to the film.
The soundtracks first single, Freddies Dead, became a hit before the films release.
Its a lament for Fat Freddie (Charles McGregor), an amiable low-level dealer killed on the job.
In the film, Freddies death has a narrative purpose but it doesnt really touch any of the characters.
The songs set the tone in other ways at other points in the movie.
Whatever else he is, Priest is a man doing his job in a city of many occupations.
/ He wouldnt know.
Miguels slow jam R.A.N.
scores a soft-porny three-way lovemaking session.
This might be because of changing attitudes toward soundtracks.
Blaxploitation produced some of the best pairings, like Isaac HayessShaftscore and Marvin GayesTrouble Man.
(Even failed team-ups had a way of working out.
Its a film whose heightened reality and alternate-universe version of Atlanta was never going to feel real.
But the right songs could have made it feel like the real deal anyway.
