When his girlfriend dies of a drug overdose, a former Green Beret decides to take vengeance on the drug gangs responsible for her death.
The Messenger is an action oddity from Italy starring former NFL player turned Blaxploitation star Fred Williamson. Williamson is also credited as the director and originator of the very thin and unfocused story. In this low-budget programmer the icon plays Jake Sebastian Turner, a Vietnam vet, Green Beret specialist, and musical prodigy who also happens to be the best cat-burglar in all of Europe. Did you get all of that? We meet him as he is being released from prison, and he’s promptly reunited with his wife, Sabrina. Which, in true exploitation form, leads to a prolonged sex scene within the film’s opening ten minutes.
Sebastian soon finds out that his wife is not only addicted to drugs, but she is also in deep trouble with the local mob over eight kilos of missing cocaine. She gets violently gunned down outside of a party, and before Sebastian can even grieve, he’s been offered $500,000 by a rival mob boss to avenge his wife’s murder.
Williamson isn’t a strong filmmaker, and the story has a number of unsavory elements, but seeing ‘The Hammer’, as the star once dubbed himself, practicing karate and kicking ass is undeniably fun. After hitting a creative peak with The Big Score (1983), Fred Williamson’s output never reached that level again. Those looking for lots of bullets and exposed chests, both Williamson’s and his numerous female co-stars, will be reasonably entertained. If the story hadn’t deviated in wild directions, the film would be better but less odd, and yet, the odd aspects of the film make the damn thing memorable in its own way.
Directed by: Fred Williamson
Written by: Brian Johnson, Conchita Lee, Anthony Wisdom
Starring: Fred Williamson, Christopher Connelly, Cameron Mitchell
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