Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, Jim Kelly, Richard Roundtree and Jim Brown all star in, with Williamson also producing and directing, One Down, Two To Go. That alone is enough to make ya' look twice, but does it deliver on its promise of four times the punch, the fury, and the excitement?

It opens with appropriately funky, bass-driven, tunes playing over the credits while showing a free-form demonstration of martial arts, weapons, board breaking, etc. It's a warm up for a series of fights. The set-up is the real deal. Williamson put together an authentic tournament, and if you won then you scored yourself five hundred bucks; if you lost, then you still got paid a hundred bucks. It's a great way to get things rolling, and it's a lot more interesting when you know all these guys you're watching are legitimately trying to kick the crap out of each other. Behind the scenes, Chuck (Jim Kelly) does a little sneaking around and finds out that there's some tipping of the scales going on. Thing is, these are the kind of people who don't like being spied on. Chuck fights hard and ends up with a bullet in him anyway; he isn't dead, but he isn't feeling good. Ralph (Richard Roundtree) is a little worried but has other things to deal with right now. He has to go see Joe Spangler (Joe Spinell) about an extremely large sum of cash. It's the payoff money for the tournament. Joe assures Ralph that Mr. Mario (Tom Signorelli), who's the man in charge of the "organization" with whom the bet was made, will pay the debt in full the following day... Uh huh. Chuck and Ralph are reunited and after comparing notes it becomes clear that nobody has any intention of paying off what they owe. The fight was rigged by the mob and now our heroes have become marked men. Chuck has already been shot (and then shot again), Ralph gets a hard beat-down by some of Rossi's (Peter Dane) men; Rossi being the man in charge locally, and on top of that, the thugs that put a hurtin' on Ralph also rape Chuck's woman. When they leave, they take her along. Time to call in some heavy re-enforcements.

Enter J (Jim Brown) and Cal (Fred Williamson). Cal is the kind of man who really knows how to make an entrance! They're around for about three minutes before they have an entire bar full of wise-asses ready to jump on 'em. Cal takes a couple of them out, J pulls his gun, and there it is… the shortest fight in the movie. They didn't come to town to mess around with these losers; there's business that needs handling. Unable to find their friends, they start an investigation of their own. It's not long before they uncover information about the fight, the money and the fact that somebody is trying to do some serious wrong.

J tracks down Mr. Mario and gets hold of the missing money. The problem now is getting out of the building. His thugs are everywhere, but with Mr. Mario as a hostage, J makes a pretty clean break. Well, maybe clean isn't the right word. Let's just say he gets away unharmed. Can't say the same for the gun-toting baddies that tried to stop him. Cal and J's poking around eventually leads them to the house where Chuck and Ralph were hiding when the shit hit the fan for them, but all they find is a little kid. The kid tells them that he's there looking for them and that their friends are hiding at his house. At nearly seventy minutes into the movie, this is the first time they all have a scene together. Chuck is unconscious, though, so he doesn't have much to offer in these few moments. After they take Chuck to the hospital (Nobody thought of doing that before now?) the conversation turns back to Rossi. Cal and J head out to check on Rossi's house, Ralph is off to check out things at the bar, and Chuck, he's looking at some long-term hospital time. Don't worry, he isn't done yet! Ralph wants to find the missing girl and all of them want to bring down the ones responsible for all this trouble in the first place.

When the climax gets under-way J stops long enough to say, "Let's turn this muther out." Before the credits roll the three of them will unload a barrel-full of badass, a lot of bullets, a lot of fire, and a lot of dead mob flunkies! One Down, Two To Go is a sort of companion piece/semi-sequel to Three The Hard Way (1974). At one point in the film, Jim Kelly says, "It's always been three, but now (looking at his bullet wound), it looks like it's one down, two to go." Richard Roundtree was not in the other film but is a welcome addition to the cast. The biggest problem I had was how far away everybody was kept from each other throughout the entire picture. All the scenes were so individualized… I was eager to see the chemistry between all four of these icons of 70's cinema. I wanted to see them "tear apart a small town - punk by punk" like the box promised. It just wasn't meant to be. Aside from that, there aren't any real big complaints I can make. You know what kind of movie you are getting from the moment you pick up the box. It's not an intellectual film for the thinking man and it's not a sappy comedy-drama that you wanna watch with your would-be girlfriend, hell no! It's a flick where you get to see four of the greats bring some heavy throw-down to a bunch of idiots who deserve nothing less than what they get! It isn't trying to be anything else. It's not a perfect movie; you won't find any real dramatic momentum or narrative brilliance here, but it is a lot of fun. I have to say one more time for the record though, I think that this would be a film that was much more highly thought of had the script been a lot more permissive in terms of the four stars interacting with each other. You could do better - You could do worse. If you're a fan of this kind of movie (notice the politically correct way I dodge the use of any labels here) and you've exhausted all your other options, then hey, step on down funk-soul brother! There's still One Down, Two To Go.

Anchor Bay has treated One Down, Two To Go very well; it's a sharp 1.85:1 widescreen presentation that's enhanced for 16x9 televisions. The colors are rich and the night scenes look great. Although the case erroneously claims that the sound is Dolby Digital Mono, it's actually a very satisfying Dolby Surround presentation. There's a commentary featuring Fred Williamson that's moderated by Anchor Bay DVD producer Perry Martin and there is very seldom a quiet moment. Martin seems to have an honest enthusiasm for what he's doing while Fred has a lot to say about this movie, other movies, studio perception, his youth, the genre as a whole, the success of his films in other countries, and much, much more. It's interesting stuff throughout and nothing less than what you'd expect from The Hammer himself. Along with that, there is a trailer and a Fred Williamson bio. That's the score, so get on with your bad self. Right on.