One time I bought a salad dressing called “Jamaica Me Bleu” Blue Cheese Dressing. It was just awful. But I purchased it because it had a clever name. This is a mistake. Although I’ve always said that the best part about creating something is naming it, you should never purchase an item based on it’s name alone.
In the case of “Across 110th Street”, I snagged the DVD because I had grooved to the Bobby Womack theme song (it’s on a CD called “Pimps, Players, & Private Eyes“ – a classic) a few times before and figured it would be a pimping, player-ing, private eye-ing movie. While there were a few pimps, maybe even a player or two, there weren’t any private eyes and the film primarily centered around a fairly standard white racist cop paired up with a black cop to try and save the day together formula. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting – which was more in line with a Shaft, Superfly, etc. style of film. So, to that end, I was a bit disappointed. Certainly no catchy 70′s catch-phrases like, “Looks like you’re gonna have to close it yourself — SHITTY!!”
That’s not to say it was bad. But I have never seen less realistic looking blood in a film – it was easily day-glo orange and had the consistency of heavy cream.
It did, however, stay true to 1970′s-style film making in the sense that it ended both awkwardly and abruptly.
