The Baron (1977)

Truly Dreadful Film

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

THE BARON is a low budget and somewhat grainy addition to the blaxploitation genre featuring a leading role for actor Calvin Lockhart (someone I best know for his turn in THE BEAST MUST DIE as well as his bit part in PREDATOR 2). It's rather a forgotten and inconsequential film, containing as it does not much in the way of action but instead focusing on the intricacies of the plotting.The story sees Lockhart's character attempting to make his own blaxploitation movie, but turning to a mobster loan shark when he runs out of funds. Various bad guys then pursue him, chief of whom is the excellent Richard Lynch, here displaying all of his trademark sliminess and villainy even at this early stage of his career. Lockhart has more charisma than muscle, but the bits with Lynch are a hoot as he steals every scene, and that bit in the restaurant is great.

the baron is one of those 1970's action movies that tried to cash in on the bigger hits like shaft and superfly.Calvin Lockhart plays a struggling actor/producer who has to deal with mobsters led by Richard Lynch trying to pass as an Italian gangster.anyway the plot is generic the main characters brother has a dept to settle with the mobsters so the baron has to do what he could to settle the score.the late great Joan Blondell plays a very wealthy woman who seduces Lockhart's character.sort of like American gigolo on the side.all for money of course.Richard Lynch who plays the heavy real good,cant remember him playing a good guy in a movie except for the delta fox where hes sort of an anti hero.there's a lot of action and violence and a brief car chase,all in all the baron is pretty entertaining in a b movie kind of way.7 out of 10.

Calivin Lockhart gives an excellent and affable performance as the Baron, an idealistic and impractical independent filmmaker who's struggling to get his first completed movie distributed. Calvin's a starry-eyed, woolly-headed dreamer with delusions of grandeur who gets a painful and jarring crash course in brutal, sordid reality when one of his financiers, a vulgar and flamboyant dope dealer called the Cokeman (a superbly cool and sweetly villainous turn by Charles MacGregor), demands that Calvin immediately cough up the $300 grand the Cokeman lent to him for his picture. The Cokeman desperately needs the dough to pay off a debt he owes to mean, racist, neurotic, homophobic and highly image conscious bon vivant loan shark Joey (veteran bad guy character actor Richard Lynch in peak scurvy form). Hard up for cash, Lockhart is forced to turn tricks as a gigolo, with his prize customers being wealthy elderly widow Joan Blondell and affluent, married young tease Caroline (the lovely Marlene Clark). Under Phillip Fenty's able, assured direction (Fenty also wrote the unusually thoughtful script and previously penned the screenplay for "Superfly"), this offbeat and interesting feature does an equally adept job as both a taut, gripping down and dirty crime flick and a trenchant, absorbing examination on the difference between dreams and reality, how far one is willing to go to make one's dreams come true, the desire to have control over your life, and the powerful need to be a success on your own terms. The catchy, funky, groovy soundtrack, uniformly top-notch acting (Lynch, decked out in flashy white suits and a snazzy top hat, especially shines as the eminently hateful and manipulative main bastard heavy), a sharply delineated contrast between the cold harshness of life on the streets and the lazy, decadent opulence of the high life, and the compelling, thematically rich narrative further enhance this film's overall sound quality. Although sometimes a bit slow and pretentious, "The Baron" still warrants praise as an ambitious, intriguing, uncommonly reflective and refreshingly unconventional existential thinking man's blaxploitation gangster sleeper.

The Baron puts a unique spin on the typical 70s Blaxploitation shoot-em-up flick. Calvin Lockheart (who you may remember as a guest star on Good Times playing Florida's gambling cousin Raymond), plays an aspiring movie actor/producer/filmmaker who must turn to the underworld (and becoming some old lady's "Hot Dog") in order to raise money to make his film. And he must pay back his investors before someone gets hurt.What Lockheart lacks in brawn (which seemed to be required for male leads in 70s black cinema -- i.e. Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, etc.), he makes up in character and charm as he "battles" the gangsters in order to give life on screen to "The Baron." And while there are fewer "battles" than a typical Blaxploitation action movie (This film is more drama than action.), the ones that are shown are even more convincing since they're not the usual quick-n-dirty gun battles that we Blaxploitation fans have seen over and over.Plenty of suspense, exciting action, good editing, solid acting, interesting storyline, and a groovy soundtrack by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson make _The Baron_ a great rental choice when you're looking for some cool 70s black cinema. Especially if you're looking for something different from the same ole shoot 'em up/karate chop Blaxploitation film.