I don't know if Isaac Hayes is more of a musician, who became an actor. However, he plays a really cool character, and the movie has a good message. The "bad guys" are black, white, and other ethnic groups, too. Truck Turner is not a bad man. He has a girlfriend who loves her cat. Truck Turner is cool with the cat, and the bad guys get the cat. That would make anyone mad. Truck Turner also has to win back his girlfriend, which is real life. His best friend is beaten up really badly, which is realistic. He has to dodge a lot of bullets. Hayes is a reluctant hero. He doesn't love fighting bad guys, but just can't give up, either. So, it is a fun, entertaining movie, that has a heart. I like that he is really a sensitive guy, who isn't just some caricature. He lives in the "real World", too. I also think that Yaphet Kotto is a highly underrated actor. His death scene was masterful.

Truck Turner and his partner Jerry are bounty hunters for bail bonds men. Turner has a reputation for being an intimidating and confident force and can command top dollar for the jobs nobody else is willing to take. When the job of retrieving pimp Gator Johnson turns sour, Tuner has to kill Gator and invokes the ire of his girl Dorinda. While Dorinda tries to hold her stable of girls together in a male dominated industry, she offers up a significant business share in her girls to the man who is able to kill Turner for her revenge.I have taken recently to watching some Blaxploitation films mostly because I find the genre to be agreeably trashy and in a way the weaknesses can be accepted and almost enjoyed as part of the experience that you have come for. Trashily made, violent, tough black male leads, gorgeous females with lots of sass, funky soundtrack, solid action and unintentional laughs – all of these things sort of come with the territory. Truck Turner actually stands out as one of the more enjoyable of the genre, while still very much being a genre film with all the staples in place. The film is built on the usual sense of tough cool in the packaging and in the lead character and the plot pretty much does what you expect as a revenge plot provides plenty of gun battles and bright red blood squibs going off – none of it particularly thrilling but none of it dull either.Where it actually benefits is in the casting. Hayes is not the best actor of course but he does have a lazy cool charm about him and he leads the film well. He is totally out-acted though by Nichelle Nichols who is not only sexy but is convincingly full of murderous rage – as others have said, it is a world away from her character on Star Trek but she really dominates the screen here with a marvellously over the top and driven house-mother harpie. Kotto is not quite as good but he is a very good presence and deserved to be used a bit better than he was. That said he still rocks most of his scenes and is rewarded with a memorable final scene. Weeks is funny, Chase is cute and beyond that everyone is par for the genre course, with plenty of bad hair and overacting in the men and lots of flesh in the women.Truck Turner is still a genre film of course and it needs to be met on those terms but it does stand out as a good example of the genre – tough, cool, good performances, lots of pimp etc stereotypes and plenty of silly gun action. Far from being a great film, it is still a very good genre piece.

Truck Turner (1974) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Violent, mean-spirited and entertaining blaxploitation film has Isaac Hayes playing Truck Turner, a former football star turned bounty hunter who gets a hit put out on him, which ends up getting his best friend killed. Soon Truck is tracking down the men behind the killing, which leads him to Harvard Blue (Yaphet Kotto). Apparently this AIP flick was originally written for Robert Mitchum but they decided to turn it into a blaxploitation flick after the genre started to take off in popularity. Hayes steps into the role with a certain style of coolness that certainly makes him right for the role. I don't think anyone would call him a great actor but he at least has what it takes to make this character believable and for the most part he's extremely entertaining to watch no matter if he's throwing out great one-liners, beating the heads in of racists or macking on his girlfriend. Hayes certainly fills the role of the good guy and Kotto, who many will remember as the FBI agent in MIDNIGHT RUN, fills out perfectly as the bad guy. Nichelle Nichols gets to scream some outrageous lines as a pimp and we get some cult faves like Dick Miller, Scatman Crothers and Charles Cyphers who many will remember from HALLOWEEN. The film contains some pretty strong violence and the action scenes are always entertaining if not believable or realistic. Just check out the scene at the end where there's a major shoot out inside a hospital. This entire sequence is certainly one of the high points of this genre. Also on hand is some downright crazy lines of dialogue that will certainly have you rolling. The entire revenge plot is leftover from countless other films but director Kaplan keeps everything moving at an extremely fast pace and in the end this is certainly a winning film for the genre.

***SPOILERS*** Very probably the best of the many black-exploitation movies to come out of the turbulent 1970's "Truck Turner" has it all and a bit more in it's star Isaac Hayes as the rough and tumble and take no BS Mac Truck Turner. A man you don't mess with if you intend to go on living and enjoying life in one piece.Doing the dangerous work of tracking down criminals who jumped bail skip tracers, slang for bail bondsmen, Turner and his partner Jerry, Alen Weeks, are given the unenviable job of bringing in vicious pimp Gator Johnson, Paul Harris, by bailsman Fogarty, Dick Miller. As things work out Gator ends up getting wasted by Turner as he, after giving himself up, attempted to gun him and his partner Jerry down. Jerry having his back turned is attacked and stabbed from behind by Gator's main squeeze the blond and big busted Stalingrad Crude, Amalik Borel, who ends up getting put to sleep by a Turner straight right to the kisser. The late Gator's partner Madam Dorinda, Michelle Nichols, mad as hell for Turner icing Gator has a hit-or insurance contract-put out on the bail bondsman offering her entire stable of high class hookers to the person who rubs him out. This sets the stage for an all out war between Truck Turner and the pimp establishment on the West Coast. Who despite their many differences ally themselves against a common cause or threat to their business ventures: Mac Truck Turner!Isaac Hayes is at his absolute best as the take no prisoners and leaved them hurting Truck Turner as he battles it out with an army of pimps and their paid hit-men in the streets and suburbs of Southern California. Not being able to make any ground against Turner as he frustrates her at every turn Madam Dorinda is forced to accepted Harvard Blue's, Yaphet Kotto, offer to put him away for good if he get's the majority share of her very successful prostitution business. It was Blue who had at first put a hit out on Dorinda's parter and boyfriend Gator after he stole his woman Stalingrad Crude from right under him. The fact that Turner got to Gator before Blue did didn't make Dorinda any happier or forgiving. Now with the entire pimp population dead or on the run, courtesy of Mac Truck Turner, it's up to the hated, by Dorinda, Harvard Blue to do the job of finishing Turner off. Before he ends up making the West Coast pimp industry, including Dorinda and Blue, as extinct as the Dodo Bird!***SPOILERS*** Unbelievable ending sequence with a mad as hell Truck Turner having it out with Blue and his hoods at a major L.A Medical Center. Not caring at all who gets hurt, among the sick dying and those being operated on, Blue and his boys storm the building in order to get Turner who's visiting a friend bailsman Nate Dinwiddle, Sam Laws. It's Nate who was put their in critical condition in order to get Turner, in visiting him, out into the open by Blue's and Madam Dorinda's henchmen. Not wasting any time or bullets Turner puts an end to Blue's career in the pimp business by blasting him and his boys to kingdom come in the aforementioned hospital shoot-out. Still not finished Turner finally confronts the person who stated this bloodbath the now ready to check out of town Madam Dorinda at her mansion with her troop of hookers on the verge of mutiny. Not falling for Dorinda's sweet talk Turnner, unlike his now murdered partner Jerry, keeps his eyes on her, even with his back turned, thus preventing her from doing him it! With a .44 caliber slug to the mid-section!