A Piece of the Action

Poitier and Cosby, successful thieves and pointedly more honest than the organisations they rob, suddenly acquire a social conscience when blackmailed by a retired cop (Jones) into doing time at the local community centre and using their knowhow to prepare a bunch of dead end kids for society. Instead of usefully contemplating the subversive implications of such an arrangement, A Piece of the Action abandons the idea that society's there for the taking in favour of wholesale sincerity and homespun philosophy. The result is best described as integration comedy: a kind of black version of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.