Truck Turner

Carrying around a 44 Magnum that was probably bought at the same place Dirty Harry Callahan bought his, Isaac Hayes essays the role of Truck Turner, former pro-football player turned skip tracer. Hayes is not too squeamish about what he has to do to bring back a given quarry and along with partner Alan Weeks, being a skip tracer he's not bound by the rules that Clint Eastwood has to live by as a cop.

My best recollection of Isaac Hayes is as the jail house friend of James Garner in The Rockford Files. Gandolf Fitch was a man of few words and a very short fuse and next to him, Truck Turner is positively garrulous.

The first part of the film is almost lighthearted in nature as we see Hayes and Weeks go about their jobs and we Hayes's relationship with girlfriend Anazette Chase. She's a nice woman, but an incurable shoplifter that Hayes constantly has to bail out and pay the fines or the merchandise for. The end of the first half though concludes with a car chase to rival Bullitt in which Weeks is wounded and their skip trace, a pimp played by Paul Harris is killed.

After this the film changes mood so abruptly it's like watching a second film. Harris's woman and partner Nichelle Nichols wants Hayes dead and will pay anything for it and brings in a whole bunch of business competitors led by Yaphett Kotto to do the job. The second half of the film is a serious of gunfights, climaxed by a blazing shootout in a hospital.

For those who remember Nichelle Nichols as the nice Lieutenant Uhura forever with that earpiece and trying to open channels on the starship Enterprise, you won't recognize the murderous fury that's in this character played by the same woman. She steals the film from Hayes in every scene she's in. I would not want her on my case.

Truck Turner is a good action film with an astonishing portrayal from Nichelle Nichols. Star Trek fans might want to check this one out.