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Nice effects though.

A Masterpiece!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

THE BARON is a low budget and somewhat grainy addition to the blaxploitation genre featuring a leading role for actor Calvin Lockhart (someone I best know for his turn in THE BEAST MUST DIE as well as his bit part in PREDATOR 2). It's rather a forgotten and inconsequential film, containing as it does not much in the way of action but instead focusing on the intricacies of the plotting.The story sees Lockhart's character attempting to make his own blaxploitation movie, but turning to a mobster loan shark when he runs out of funds. Various bad guys then pursue him, chief of whom is the excellent Richard Lynch, here displaying all of his trademark sliminess and villainy even at this early stage of his career. Lockhart has more charisma than muscle, but the bits with Lynch are a hoot as he steals every scene, and that bit in the restaurant is great.

"The Baron" really is quite the mess. This was included in a cheap package with a bunch of other "urban" films. Not a good movie by any means, but fun, and there are certain reasons to keep at it.The first of course is the great Calvin Lockhart, who just shines in pretty much anything he is in. He's a black filmmaker fighting "the man" to get a film made, but who has to get shady after turning down a deal that would have turned his movie(with Lockhart playing "The Baron," a devil-may-care wealthy adventurer) into a "white" movie. He gets involved with the mob and other shady characters.The leader of the mob, "Joey," is played by the great Richard Lynch, who is always perfect at playing scum. I've seen him on Galactica, Buck Rogers, and in "The Seven-Ups" and he's just fantastic. It was a very pleasant surprise that he was in this! And he is definitely a mean SOB. Lynch is so good at playing these roles that seeing him in 'real life' acting nicely must be a shock.Joan Blondell appears as the rich white woman who eventually supports pretty boy Calvin. And there are some other familiar 70's movie faces as well.The film really isn't that well made, but Lockhart, Lynch and the others make this a very good viewing. Some action and violence, but nothing crazy, and a very fast and convenient ending on the FDR drive (I think). Check this out for Calvin and Lynch especially.

Calivin Lockhart gives an excellent and affable performance as the Baron, an idealistic and impractical independent filmmaker who's struggling to get his first completed movie distributed. Calvin's a starry-eyed, woolly-headed dreamer with delusions of grandeur who gets a painful and jarring crash course in brutal, sordid reality when one of his financiers, a vulgar and flamboyant dope dealer called the Cokeman (a superbly cool and sweetly villainous turn by Charles MacGregor), demands that Calvin immediately cough up the $300 grand the Cokeman lent to him for his picture. The Cokeman desperately needs the dough to pay off a debt he owes to mean, racist, neurotic, homophobic and highly image conscious bon vivant loan shark Joey (veteran bad guy character actor Richard Lynch in peak scurvy form). Hard up for cash, Lockhart is forced to turn tricks as a gigolo, with his prize customers being wealthy elderly widow Joan Blondell and affluent, married young tease Caroline (the lovely Marlene Clark). Under Phillip Fenty's able, assured direction (Fenty also wrote the unusually thoughtful script and previously penned the screenplay for "Superfly"), this offbeat and interesting feature does an equally adept job as both a taut, gripping down and dirty crime flick and a trenchant, absorbing examination on the difference between dreams and reality, how far one is willing to go to make one's dreams come true, the desire to have control over your life, and the powerful need to be a success on your own terms. The catchy, funky, groovy soundtrack, uniformly top-notch acting (Lynch, decked out in flashy white suits and a snazzy top hat, especially shines as the eminently hateful and manipulative main bastard heavy), a sharply delineated contrast between the cold harshness of life on the streets and the lazy, decadent opulence of the high life, and the compelling, thematically rich narrative further enhance this film's overall sound quality. Although sometimes a bit slow and pretentious, "The Baron" still warrants praise as an ambitious, intriguing, uncommonly reflective and refreshingly unconventional existential thinking man's blaxploitation gangster sleeper.

The Baron puts a unique spin on the typical 70s Blaxploitation shoot-em-up flick. Calvin Lockheart (who you may remember as a guest star on Good Times playing Florida's gambling cousin Raymond), plays an aspiring movie actor/producer/filmmaker who must turn to the underworld (and becoming some old lady's "Hot Dog") in order to raise money to make his film. And he must pay back his investors before someone gets hurt.What Lockheart lacks in brawn (which seemed to be required for male leads in 70s black cinema -- i.e. Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, etc.), he makes up in character and charm as he "battles" the gangsters in order to give life on screen to "The Baron." And while there are fewer "battles" than a typical Blaxploitation action movie (This film is more drama than action.), the ones that are shown are even more convincing since they're not the usual quick-n-dirty gun battles that we Blaxploitation fans have seen over and over.Plenty of suspense, exciting action, good editing, solid acting, interesting storyline, and a groovy soundtrack by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson make _The Baron_ a great rental choice when you're looking for some cool 70s black cinema. Especially if you're looking for something different from the same ole shoot 'em up/karate chop Blaxploitation film.