Scott LeBrun Isaac Hayes effortlessly projects tons of cool in this starring feature. He plays the title role, a football star turned skip tracer (a detective who tracks down bail jumpers) who works with a partner, Jerry (Alan Weeks). He gets an assignment to nab a ruthless pimp named Gator (Paul Harris). In the course of attempting to apprehend Gator, Truck and Jerry are forced to gun the man down. This doesn't sit well with Gators' woman, a madam and maniacal harridan named Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols, a long way from Lt. Uhura). So she recruits other pimps to act as assassins and take out Truck.Hayes's screen presence makes all the difference. This is a mighty fine vehicle for him, and he composes the delightful score as well. He has fine chemistry with both the amiable Weeks and the very sexy Annazette Chase as Trucks' frustrated girlfriend Annie. Jonathan Kaplan ("The Accused", "Heart Like a Wheel") directs in high style, and there's quite an enjoyable amount of action. Things get effectively violent, too, with lots of squibs going off and much gushing of the red stuff. "Truck Turner" is not without a sense of humour, as proved by the "funeral for a pimp" sequence. The final shootout inside the hospital is visceral and exciting.Nichols is a fiery and striking villainess with a foul mouth, and the other supporting players fare pretty well. Yaphet Kotto does what he can with an under-written role as an ambitious crook who understands Truck better than most of the inept would be killers in the story. But get a load of the actors who also appear: Sam Laws, Charles Cyphers, Scatman Crothers (sporting a hilarious, ridiculous wig), Dick Miller, Stan Shaw, Henry Kingi, Don Megowan, Tara Strohmeier, Mel Novak, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Johnny Ray McGhee, and John Dennis. Look for director Kaplan in an uncredited cameo as a cook."Truck Turner" is solid and diverting, a good example of the blaxploitation genre overall.Eight out of 10.

Lee Eisenberg The string of blaxploitation movies continued with Jonathan Kaplan's "Truck Turner", starring Isaac Hayes as a football player looking for a bail-jumping pimp. The trailer proclaims HE MAKES A HEALTHY LIVING...BY MAKING LIVING UNHEALTHY! The movie has everything that you might expect in such a movie. What I thought was really neat was the cast. Aside from Hayes (known to later generations as Chef on "South Park"), there's Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on "Star Trek"), Scatman Crothers (Dick Hallorann in "The Shining"), and character actor Dick Miller, who often plays a character named Walter Paisley, but has also appeared in every one of Joe Dante's movies.All in all, a really fun flick.

lastliberal Isaac Hayes is Truck Turner, a skip tracer. He, and his partner Jerry (Alan Weeks) go after a sleazy pimp and end up killing him. Now, the pimp's babe (Nichelle Nichols - Star Trek) is after Truck. She's offering half her $250,000 annual income from her girls. Hey, it's the early 70s. That's a lot of money! Like all blaxploitation with pimps, this one has some fantastic outfits on both men and women - some really bitchin cars, too.Yaphet Kotto is the biggest pimp out to get truck. You can expect a lot of shooting before this is settled.Kotto should have been given an Academy Award for his death scene. :-)

sol ***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!