Confusing fucking world ain't it, man?

Robert Hooks is still amazing as the cool fixer in Trouble Man (1972): he's front-facing with a moral code, like Mike Hammer, and the plot is tight. The movie relies less on its soundtrack than writer / producer John DF Black's bookend Shaft (1971); director Ivan Dixon (he was Kinchloe on Hogan's Heroes) shoots in close-ups that keep the characters in your face while danger lurks in the real-life backgrounds. Watching it now – like Straight Time (1978) – the drama is heightened by these documentary details of nooks and crannies now erased from cities, or at least the fictionally-held versions of them. So it is a confusing fucking world, but the action cuts through it.