That Man Bolt (1973)

What a beautiful movie!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Fred "The Hammer" Williamson displays plenty of charisma in this goofy but fun globe trotting adventure. The Hammer plays Jefferson Bolt, a hotshot international courier. He's hired by a mysterious British man (Byron Webster) to transport a suitcase full of money from Hong Kong to Mexico City by way of Los Angeles. As fate would have it, a fair amount of the criminal element are eager to get their hands on this booty. Bolt takes on all comers, and blows up lots of stuff real good, and naturally also finds time to make sweet, sweet love to the ladies."That Man Bolt" suffers from a convoluted plot, by Charles Eric Johnson and Ranald MacDougall, which may have viewers scratching their heads. But if one can go with the flow, they'll find that this escapist fare kills time agreeably enough. It's an offbeat mixture of blaxploitation, comedy, international intrigue, and martial arts. The filmmakers are wise never to take things too seriously, which does help a great deal. Even when Bolts' lovely lady friend, singer Samantha Nightingale (Teresa Graves, who gets to belt out two numbers), is written out of the action, he seems to get over it without too much problem. The action is competently executed, and the violence won't be too graphic for some in the audience. (You gotta love it when a hood attempts to gun down Bolt and gets a mirror shard in the neck for his troubles.) Accompanying the various goings-on is a wonderfully lively score composed by the great Charles Bernstein.The Hammer is just as cool as can be, and is well supported by Graves, Webster, Masatoshi Nakamura as a slimy villain, and Jack Ging as Bolts' Las Vegas buddy, a casino owner.If you're a Hammer fan, you'll be pleased, even if overall the movie is not one of his best.Seven out of 10.

"Jefferson Bolt" (Fred Williamson) is a courier of special merchandise who has been hired to take a briefcase containing $1 million in cash from Hong Kong to Mexico City with a stop in Los Angeles along the way. However, when he gets to Los Angeles he encounters some hit men waiting for him and tracks these thugs to Las Vegas. Once in Las Vegas he meets up with some friends in order to get some information on those out to get him. Soon one thing leads to another and he discovers that the people behind everything are much more influential and powerful than he thought. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this started out to be a pretty good film. Unfortunately, rather than staying committed to the international intrigue angle which was working quite well the movie began focusing more on Fred Williamson which caused the film to suffer in comparison. Not only was his character much too cocky and reckless but the martial arts scenes involving him were rather second-rate as well. Even so it wasn't a bad movie overall and I give it an average rating.

Fred Williamson is Bolt and indeed does what Fred Williamson does best. Which is talk trash, beat up the bad guys and get down with the ladies . Bolt is a courier and takes a job to transport money from Hong Kong to Mexico City instead of doing jail time. On his way of completion of that task thugs from the syndicate try to take him down.Bolt than goes full circle and beats everyone up , chomps on some cigars and even finds time to get laid. That Man Bolt is a memorable blaxsploitation classic from a big studio . Fred went the independent route after this , quality varies but Fred Williamson still gets to be cool and take out the bad guys . Those movies don't look as good as this though and while I am definitely a fan of a lot of his independent features , it would have been nice if he got to make more movies that had larger budgets during this period.

Exactly that is what you get. A somehow black version of James Bond. Blaxploitation star Fred Williamson does a good job, fast story lines and a lot of action. Clearly as meaningless and senseless as in a James Bond movie but I enjoyed it a lot since I am also a bigtime fan of the whole genre. He even uses some special gadgets and travels around the world - of course not to forget - he gets the hot chicks. One of his best one liner - if he just finished some part of his job "charming". Of course not a shaft, coffy or foxy brown but a really nice second line blaxploitation flic. The addition of some martial arts shows also the KungFu heyday - of course not too professional but enjoyable.