Bullet Points: One Down, Two to Go
To celebrate the birthday of legendary football player and actor Jim Brown, let’s take a look at his 1976 film One Down, Two To Go. I’m not real sure what the title means but Jim shares the screen with his pal Fred Williamson and fellow badass Jim Kelly so it can’t be all bad…can it?
The Gist: A Karate tournament is fixed and a group of guys from California are screwed out of money until they find out about it and call in a couple of West Coast tough guys to help out. They dish out a brand of their own justice against a bunch of racist people.
The Cast: I saw Jim Kelly, Jim Brown, and Fred Williamson and thought this might be the movie for me but I was left unimpressed. They all get names but we rarely hear them. As a viewer, I never really understood who Brown and Williamson were and why they were able to get away with murder every 3 minutes. The imdb pages says Cal and J were cops but they pull up in limos and wearing suits so I’m not sure about that. They kill a ton of guys too. The Sheriff doesn’t seem too worried about it. Jim Kelly is gone after about 20 minutes so that was a real bummer. A waste of a great cast.
The amount of manly mustaches in this movie is intimidating in itself.
The Villain: White people.
Even I want to kick this guys ass.
The Action: Wow. The gunfights are pretty terrible. Guys fire 20 shots out of a six shot revolver. Stunt men jump onto very obvious pads that are still on screen. The karate tournament footage was probably my favorite action as it was actually real fighting. Williamson apparently paid martial artists to put on a real tournament so it wouldn’t look fake so those guys are fighting for $500. In the end, they shoot up a bunch of guys and rescue the girl. Welp, I guess that ends it.
Jim and Fred know that there is a time and a place to whoop a man’s ass. Sometimes it’s just easier to blast them!
Take it Home:
- Huh: Seen as a sequel of sorts to Three the Hard Way.
- What’s my cut: These guys sure go through a lot to split $200,000 like 8 ways.
- Favorite quote: “We’ll be at the Holiday Inn.” I don’t know why I liked it, maybe cause the movie is from the 70’s and it seemed funny to me.
- Favorite quote: A man grabs Williamson and he pushes a gun into his gut, “You may be good in Kung Fu, but I’m an expert in Gun Fu.” Awesome.
Rating: 2/5
