Main Cast: Hope Clarke, Bill Cosby, Ja'net DuBois, Jason Evers, Frances Foster
Release Year: 1977
Country: US
Run Time: 140 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier, co-stars of the comic capers Uptown Saturday Night and Let's Do It Again, team up again for this socially conscious comedy-adventure. This time out, Poitier and Cosby play Manny Durrell and Dave Anderson, Windy City con artists with a long history of cheating crooks who rip off the poor. They are blackmailed by retired cop Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones) into "giving back to the community." Manny and Dave soon find themselves posing as career counselors for a group of surly inner-city youths at a local community center. Despite the efforts of such unruly kids as class clown Gerald (Eric Laneuville) and bitter Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Manny actually begins to take pride in the help he's giving to his students. Soon, though, he's forced to deal with two additional obstacles: the arrival of his girlfriend's obnoxious parents (Gammy Burdett and Wonderful Smith) and the attentions of a local mobster (Titos Vandis) upset that he's been had. As with his previous Cosby collaborations, Poitier directed A Piece of the Action, whose cast also includes Denise Nicholas as a community center leader, Tracy Reed as Manny's girlfriend, Nikki, and Ja'net DuBois as Nikki's tipsy aunt, Nellie. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
The third and final installment in the Bill Cosby/Sidney Poitier "trilogy," A Piece of the Action again abandons the characters and plot lines of previous outings to provide a new variation on the stars' buddy dynamics. The film also eschews straight-up crime comedy for something a little more socially conscious. Although the comedic bits prove too broad to gel particularly well -- unless one counts the unintentional humor in hearing Poitier meticulously intone, "You not dealing with a boy, titty-sucker" -- the caper elements provide a nice contrast to prevailing Blaxploitation stereotypes. As in Uptown Saturday Night and Let's Do It Again, the film's classy gangster schtick is borrowed from classic crime flicks rather than their gaudier '70s descendants. A Piece of the Action may not have seemed au courant at the time of its release, but its breezy entertainment has dated fairly well. The film also, however, offers a thoughtful streak during the plot thread in which Poitier (echoing his performances in The Blackboard Jungle and To Sir, With Love) teaches job skills to a group of inner-city youths. In stark contrast to such feel-good, white-savior mythology as Dangerous Minds and The Principal, A Piece of the Action treats the subject intelligently and from several angles, exploring downwardly mobile peer pressure and bourgeois guilt with something approaching real insight. The neat ending may not completely resolve such thorny issues, but for a supposedly lightweight romp, this film has a lot on its mind. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
James Earl Jones - Joshua Burke; Marc Lawrence - Louie; Denise Nicholas - Lila French; Sidney Poitier - Manny Durrell; Tracy Reed - Nikki McLean; Titos Vandis - Bruno; Rudy Diaz; Cyril Poitier; Sheryl Lee Ralph - Barbara Hanley; Pat Renella; Wonderful Smith; Ernest Thomas; Eric Laneuville; Edward Love; Bryan O'Dell; Gammy Burdett; Kurt Grayson
Credit
David Rawley - Costume Designer, Marie V. Brown - Costume Designer, Dwight Williams - First Assistant Director, Sidney Poitier - Director, Pembroke J. Herring - Editor, Curtis Mayfield - Composer (Music Score), Alfred Sweeney - Production Designer, Donald M. Morgan - Cinematographer, Melville Tucker - Producer, William J. McLaughlin - Set Designer, Willie D. Burton - Sound/Sound Designer, Wiliam L. McCaughey - Sound/Sound Designer, Henry Kingi - Stunts Coordinator, Timothy March - Screen Story, Charles Blackwell - Screenwriter, Timothy March - Screenwriter, Sioux Richards - Script Supervisor
Dave Anderson (Cosby) and Manny Durrell (Poitier) are two high-class sneak thieves who have never been caught. Joshua Burke (Jones) is a retired detective who has enough evidence on the both of them to put them behind bars. Instead, he offers to maintain his silence if the crooks will go straight and do work at a youth center for delinquents. At first, the crooks are reluctant and unwilling (and so are the kids). As time goes by they gain the trust and admiration of the kids and they start to enjoy the job. All goes well until someone out of the past tells them they have to do one last heist...or else...
