WILLIE DYNAMITE is commercialized and selling lies on Arrow Video USA's Blu-ray of studio Universal's polished stab at the Blaxploitation genre.

Willie Dynamite (Roscoe Orman, F/X) is one of New York's top pimps with "seven women in the palm of his hand," with "bottom lady" Honey (Norma Donaldson, POETIC JUSTICE) making sure his stable are all out on the job at every convention of horny businessmen. His world, however, is about to be upended. When "top pimp" Bell (KOJAK's Roger Robinson) convenes a summit and proposes that his fellow pimps – among them ROBOCOP's Robert DoQui and SANFORD AND SON's Nathaniel Taylor – they divide up their turf to better compete against freelancers, this goes against Willie D's sense of free enterprise and he is the only dissenting vote. The next day his car is towed and his newest girl Pashen (Joyce Walker, HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF) is busted. While Willie D is being hassled by bigoted white detective Celli (George Murdock, BREAKER! BREAKER!) and his black Muslim partner Pointer (Albert Hall, APOCALYPSE NOW), Pashen is approached in jail by Cora (Diana Sands, A RAISIN IN THE SUN), an ex-prostitute turned social worker who tries to convince her to give up prostitution like another client she hold up as an example who is now a successful model. After seeing how Willie D treats Pashen when she gets off on bail, Cora decides to declare war on him. She attempts to get at him through his girls, pointing out to them the inequity of their working relationship ("He's wearin' mink and you get rabbit") and then trying to dig up evidence of his illegal activities for her assistant district attorney boyfriend (Thalmus Rasulala, BUCKTOWN). Everyone seemingly has it out for Willie D and he has no idea where the next hit is coming from, but he is always ready for a fight.

Released theatrically by Universal Pictures and in 2005 on anamorphic DVD (followed by the SOUL SHOWCASE COLLECTION triple feature with TRICK BABY and THAT MAN BOLT), WILLIE DYNAMITE was first released on Blu-ray by Arrow in the UK in 2017. Their American Blu-ray features the same master and the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen looks spectacular. There is little information about the source of the transfer other than "original elements" but it does not look like an old master. Detail is great, as if the transfer supervisors felt that the title song's mention of "satin and silk" meant that they had no excuse not to show off the textures of the costumes to their best while colors pop throughout calling attention to the degree of costume design and set decoration that set this film apart from grittier Blaxploitation films. The LPCM 2.0 mono track also sounds great due to the largely set-bound shooting and the professional standards in shooting and post-production sound editing one would expect of a studio-backed production (rather than some of the same post-production houses being handed over everything from a low budget production and having to make due). Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.

A studio-backed Blaxploitation film from blockbuster producing team Richard Zanuck (JAWS) and David Brown (COCOON), WILLIE DYNAMITE has high production value with eye-popping art direction and costumes, a great supporting cast of character actors and black actors who sent onto better things, good performances, and a funky theme song by Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas. On the other hand, it suffers from diffidence about where our sympathies are supposed to lie. As with a lot of Blaxploitation films, there is a tension between having a protagonist who is a pimp and how he contributes to the ugly realities of that lifestyle for himself, his girls, and his family – his sister and church-going mother (Royce Wallace) ostensibly believing that he is a talent agent with a girl band but appearing to be more suspicious about the source of Willie D's money – while Cora's boyfriend and black cop Pointer seem less sympathetic for playing dirty to try to put him behind bars. The script is particularly heavy-handed in spelling out those contradictions from the usual social message points – when Willie D asks why Pointer is bent out of shape about a dead hooker, Pointer replies ("She's my sister. She's your sister too") – as well as going overboard in framing the relationship between pimp, prostitute, and client in business terms. Willie D tells Pashen that he's selling an idea to the clients while he is running his girls like a production line, and Cora facetiously calling herself "consumer protection agency. A sort of a Ralph Nader for hookers" although it does draw parallels between Willie D selling Pashen's body as a hooker and the photographer Cora sets her up with hoping he can "sell her." The last act turnaround in which Cora separates the man from the pimp and Willie D sees the error of his ways is dramatically satisfying but some may feel that it lets him off the hook a little too easily (as do a number of Blaxploitation films in which the pimp walks away from the lifestyle).