Semiskilled

By J.C.

TRUCK TURNER

Directed by JONATHAN KAPLAN

Screenplay by OSCAR WILLIAMS and MICHAEL ALLIN

Perhaps best known until now for the score of Shaft, Isaac Hayes here follows Three Tough Guys with another lame shot at establishing some kind of on-camera identity for himself. The vehicle he has chosen is a numskull cops-and-robbers piece about a skip tracer (someone who hunts down bail jumpers). Hayes forsakes his rock-performing wardrobe of bare chest wrapped in chains to slop around Los Angeles in a variety of Levi outfits, glowering, guzzling cans of Coors and ferreting out various criminal types. He is called Truck because his methods usually carry a certain violent impact, and "a gross son of a bitch" for different, although equally obvious reasons.

Hayes is large, but no one could truthfully call him imposing, and the movie was made without benefit of craft, care or wit. This does not seem to have bothered Hayes or anyone else. Only the director appears to have sensed the savage stupidity of this material, but his idea of a corrective is to make fun of it. That is a little like making gags at the expense of your own deformity.

sbJ.C

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