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The movie is a cliché-ridden boxing yarn, reminiscent of ‘40s and ‘50s noir boxing movies like Robert Wise's great film starring Robert Ryan, The Set-Up (1949). But the clichés in fact jibe quite well with the struggles of its African-American characters and their varied desperate circumstances, lending it an authenticity usually lacking in such cheap pictures. Further, for the most part Hammer is pretty far removed from "The Hammer," Williamson's later, quietly cocky, cigar-smoking and testosterone-driven screen image. B.J. Hammer, the character he plays here, is more subtle, conflicted role. He's pretty good, and several of the supporting performances are unexpectedly excellent. All told, not a bad film at all, and quite unlike the flashier star vehicles with which Williamson is most associated.
The high-def transfer, licensed to Olive Films from MGM (via their United Artists catalog), looks good though the disc is bereft of extra features.
Former Golden Gloves champion B.J. Hammer (Williamson) is a dockworker overseen by black gangster and fight promoter Big Sid (Charles Lampkin) on behalf of the Mafia. Big Sid's muscle, psychotic white henchman Brenner (William Smith, natch), is supervising the smuggling into port of a million-dollar crate of heroin. When a dockworker unaware of the crime threatens the operation, another thug, vicious, plug-ugly Riley (plug-ugly John Quade), starts beating the man up. B.J. intercedes, impressing Brenner and Big Sid who decide to take B.J. on as a potential heavyweight fighter.
The movie falls in line with the usual boxing movie clichés. His trainer, "The Professor" (Mel Stewart), works B.J. into a state of total exhaustion. B.J. falls in love with Big Sid's beautiful secretary, Lois (Vonetta McGee), though when she wants to keep their relationship on the up-and-up, he has a brief fling with Sid's slutty white mistress, Rhoda (Elizabeth Harding). ("I'll be your nigger if you'll let me!" she pleads.) As he begins to win bout after bout, a worried Lois, as well as concerned plainclothes cop Davis (Bernie Hamilton), try to warn B.J. that he's merely being set-up. But B.J. counters that he can take care of himself. "Nobody carries me," he complains to Lois, "Back off!"
Sure enough, just as B.J. looks ready to take on the world, the largely unseen Mafia puppet master pulling Big Sid's strings orders B.J. to take a dive at the climactic championship fight. To ensure B.J.'s "cooperation," Brenner kidnaps Lois.
In this instance, all the overly familiar boxing movie iconography blends pretty well into the picture setting and its characters. For instance, the subplot of a syndicate planning to build up, take down, and build up again a local favorite as a means of manipulating and exploiting the boxer's poor, working-class fans is on one hand an overworked cliché. But to apply this to white criminals exploiting poor blacks is entirely believable and indeed standard operating procedure in American ghettos of the early ‘70s. B.J. promising a starry-eyed boy that he'll win the Big Bout is a bit too precious, but other scenes are surprisingly effective and play authentically.
B.J., for instance, is no saint. At the beginning of the story he's living out of his girlfriend Mary's (Nawana Davis) apartment, where she's just paid the rent turning tricks. She's understandably upset when he unceremoniously packs up and leaves her and, in a later scene, finds her pathetically turning tricks and back on drugs.
Charles Lampkin gives a terrific, sympathetic performance as Sid, who fancies himself a big wheeler-dealer, but when he extolls B.J.'s virtues to his boss, he's genuinely saddened when ordered to tell B.J. to "do a swan." At that moment Sid seems to realize that he's just a bagman for the mob like everyone else, and that Brenner really isn't his muscle, but rather his boss's enforcer.
Lois is another cliché, the "good girl" trying to coax B.J. out of the muck and mire that is corrupt professional boxing, but Vonetta McGee makes her character understatedly believable.
Hammer has its share of narrative clunkiness, such as the fact that cop Davis seems to be taking on L.A.'s criminal underworld single-handedly. No other cops are around to assist him at critical moments, and in one scene, he guns down a suspect and simply leaves the body and crime scene to go somewhere else. (Spoilers) The ending is upbeat but not believable, suggesting B.J.'s actions are without consequences; a downbeat ending could have lent the film more lasting power than it has.
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