The Movie:

One of only a few films directed by actor Ivan Dixon (who also helmed The Spook Who Sat By The Door), 1972's Trouble Man takes place in Los Angeles and follows a man referred to only as Mr. T (Robert Hooks). He's the type of guy that solves problems for a fee, and he makes a decent living doing it. He's not above handing out the occasional freebie, he's got a conscience after all, but really he's basically a hired gun. A very talented hired gun, but a hired gun nevertheless.

Chalky Price (Paul Winfield) and Pete Cockrell (Ralph Waite) run a craps game. That's what they do and, until recently, they were making a decent living at it too. Unfortunately for them, masked and well-armed hired guns working for the competition have started showing up, knocking over the games and making off with the loot, occasionally leaving some dead bodies behind. This, obviously, is not good for business. As such, they find themselves in need of Mr. T's assistance. He agrees to take the case for a price, but soon realizes, after he's been framed for murder, that these guys have set him up. From there, he sets out to clear his name, find out why they did what they did to him, and ultimately to make sure that they never do it again.

Don't mess with Mr. T.

Those expecting the hard-hitting action of better known Blaxploitation pictures might be let down by the fact that Trouble Man is a slow burn picture. There isn't much in the way of violence until the last twenty minutes (at which point, to the picture's credit, it makes up for lost time with a fantastic finale) and there isn't any nudity (though a tight shirt sans bra almost counts). It's not nearly as exploitative as some of its cinematic brethren and the first two thirds of the film are definitely on the slow side.

Having said that, it works so long as you go in with proper expectations. Mr. T is a well-written and well-thought out character. Like others in his trade, he has a moral code by which he abides but he's not to be trifled with. He has a steady girl (played by the pretty Paula Kelly) but cheats on her in the first scene. He's no angel, that's for sure, but he holds our attention. Much of the credit for this goes to Robert Hooks, a large and looming presence if ever there was one. He's a big guy, handsome in a chiseled-face sort of way, but more than that he looks tough. You wouldn't want to be on his bad side if he started throwing his weight around. He probably took some cues from Richard Roundtree's turn as the lead in the Shaft movies and it would be easy to draw some obvious parallels between the two characters, but Hooks brings enough of his own thing to the part to make it his own. He's watchable, he's great with the one-liners and he's a bad dude, but he never overdoes it and for that reason the movie never falls into camp territory the way something like Dolemite does.

There are some interesting supporting players here too. Winfield is delightfully sinister as one of the heavies, he's well cast here, and Ralph Waite as his partner is just as much fun. Paula Kelly is good in her part but woefully underused, she doesn't really have a whole lot to do here except just look good and occasionally hang off of Hooks. William Smithers shows up as one of the cops working the case. However, this is pretty much Hooks' show all the way, he does most of the heavy lifting here and Dixon's camera loves him.

The movie benefits quite a bit from the use of some great Los Angeles location photography. This gives it the gritty tone that it needs as we move from pool hall to back alley to scuzzy hotel room to the police station and then out into the streets. It's nicely shot with some absolutely gorgeous (and often times clearly film noir inspired) photography it and makes great use not only of color but of shadows throughout. On top of that we get a really underappreciated score from the late, great Marvin Gaye. The movie could probably have been trimmed by ten to fifteen minutes and been better for it, but otherwise, Trouble Man is a solid film through and through.

Video:

Trouble Man arrives on Blu-ray from Kino Studio Classics framed at 1.85.1 widescreen in an AVC encoded transfer and it looks really good if occasionally soft. Detail is solid throughout the presentation and texture is typically really good too. The image is almost pristine, there's virtually no print damage worth noting at all, while grain is nice and natural looking, never intrusive but definitely there as it should be. Black levels are good and color reproduction very strong as well, you'll really notice this with the different pieces of flashy attire worn by the various characters in the film. The image is free of compression artifacts and edge enhancement. There might be some minor noise reduction in action here, resulting in some slight softness, but otherwise the transfer shapes up nicely.