"Black Fist" (1975) is a fun action movie that fizzles in the end. It's as if the filmmakers hadn't written an ending for the film, or maybe they just ran out of energy or money when it came time to wrap up the film. A white Mafioso kills the pregnant wife of a successful black street fighter, Leroy Fisk, after Fisk takes his winnings, leaves the fighting scene, and opens a bar. Fisk vows revenge and begins to kill off the boss' men one by one. The white Mafioso, all the while, is made out to be a disgusting, brutal thug, torturing his junkie girlfriend even after she gives him useful information against Fisk. These scenes, of course, whet our appetite for the eventual bloody confrontation we assume will happen between Fisk and the Mafioso. Not so. In the end, an even higher-ranking Mafioso kills him, and he does so off screen, and then he tells Fisk about it. (You see, he wants to hire Fisk to run part of his organization because he's such an efficient killer.) Fisk is obviously ticked off--as are we--and he dispatches with the man in about three second of screen time and the movie ends. While very anticlimactic, "Black Fist" is still a good low-budget blaxploitation ride.
