Reviewed - Baadasssss!: Melvin Van Peebles's 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, a nervy, profane working through of African-American frustration at The Man, has often, quite wrongly been identified as an emanation of the era's so-called blaxploitation craze writes Donald Clarke.

Produced by a multi-racial crew which, conscious of the unions' hostility to integration, had to pretend to be shooting a porn film, this broad, urban western was far too baggy and loosely structured to accommodate any mainstream categorisation.

By contrast Baadasssss!, in which Melvin's son, Mario, recreates the extraordinary story behind the film, is a rigidly linear and unadventurously conventional piece of work. At times, the impression is of a squawky free jazz tune being covered by a cocktail-bar trio. The younger Van Peebles, here working with a considerably smaller budget than he would have had on New Jack City or Posse, may have inherited his father's gift for frugality, but he has not taken on his enthusiasm for experimentation.

All that said, Baadasssss!, does tell an important tale with admirable clarity. Mario, tying himself into an intricate Oedipal knot, stars as Melvin, who, as the film begins, is enjoying the commercial success of his Hollywood comedy Watermelon Man.

The studio wants another light diversion, but the young director, eager to counterbalance traditional mainstream representations of African-Americans, has a more radical notion. He intends to make a film about a black antihero who, after assaulting a couple of racist cops, actually gets away.

Making liberal use of archival footage, the picture effectively - if occasionally rather shrilly - ridicules Hollywood's colour-confusion. Meanwhile, Van Peebles Sr marshals his response. Eventually, deserted by investors and shunned by the Screen Actors Guild, the director is forced to borrow money from Bill Cosby. (Or somebody with his name; TK Carter, who plays the role, looks nothing like the comic.) It is worth musing upon the contrast between Sweetback's unforgiving ghetto environments and the middle-class nowhere that Cosby would later invent for the Huxtables.

A crucial subplot focuses on the relationship between Melvin and the adolescent Mario (Khleo Thomas). The older man, distracted by his artistic tunnel vision, cast his son (then about 13) in a deeply dubious sex scene and it seems he has not yet been entirely forgiven. Less successful than these affecting sequences are the several moments where Mario attempts to prefigure his own career.

"This kid's sure got an eye," a crew-member says when the kid starts playing with a camera. Really? It's not as if he grew up to be Terrence Malick.