Cinema: Wonder Woman

CLEOPATRA JONES

Directed by JACK STARRETT

Screenplay by ELEANOR PERRY

A modest few cheers for Jack Starrett, a director with an affection for razzle-dazzle action and a talent for staging the kind of outsize violence that is comic and compelling at the same time. His movies are burdened with lapses of taste and a lot of jokes that are vintage Elks-lodge stuff. But they have a flat-out rhythm, a certain sleazy charm, and an emphatically visceral impact.

Cleopatra Jones chronicles the highly unbelievable exploits of a female superagent (Tamara Dobson) who is black, tough, gorgeous and invincible—not necessarily in that order. Cleopatra, who is referred to as "wonder woman," is particularly concerned with quashing dope traffic in the ghetto, and the movie manages to be effective anti-junk propaganda without getting sanctimonious about it. The archvillain is a bulbous bull-dyke, a queen of the pushers called Mommy (Shelley Winters), who turns herself out in a lot of black and henna and rains down awful retribution on recalcitrant underlings. Cleopatra and Mommy spend most of the picture circling each other, but when they finally get together it turns out to be not much of a contest at all.

This is perhaps the first movie in which the traditional male-female roles have been completely—and rather deftly—reversed. Miss Dobson always takes the initiative and is indisputably at the epicenter of the action. The leading man, Bernie Casey, is trotted out for a little sentiment and sex appeal only when a romantic interlude is needed. Casey handles his role of sex object and minor plot tool with aplomb and a certain bemusement. Miss Dobson is beautiful, with the kind of long (6 ft. 2 in.), easily gratifying symmetry that makes words like statuesque seem puny. It is also gratifying that, unlike most former models, when she recites lines, she achieves a measure of verisimilitude, and once in a while some humor. · Jay Cocks