Foxy Brown

My experience with the 70's blaxploitation genre is minimal: the original Shsft, and the RiffTrax version of The Guy From Harlem, two diametrically opposed ends of the spectrum. But I know enough about the genre through incidental exposure and reading about it to know what to expect, for the most part: plenty of action from a one-person wrecking crew, usually driven by vengeance or justice. Plenty of funk and R&B music as a soundtrack. A lot of swearing. And that's Foxy Brown. Not as much action as I would've liked, and she gives up on going undercover in the prostitution ring rather quickly. In fact, that's a thing with the whole movie -- it rushes through most of its scenes and set-ups. It's a movie with one eye always on the next scene, rather than letting the current one spread out and be all it can be. And I've seen Pam Grief elsewhere, and I know she has a distinct charisma about her that's magnetic; Foxy Brown does not capitalize on that to its fullest extent. Foxy could've been played by just about anybody. There's some entertainment value just from the level of cheese and 70's charm here, but Foxy Brown overall is a very workman-like movie that goes through its path-of-vengeance motions with perfunctory enthusiasm. What charms it has are not from the movie itself but from the amusement from the of-its-time circumstances. Foxy Brown is too by the numbers to get its head above water.