[Richard Pryor Live in Concert] is simply a filmed record of a solo show that Pryor did in Long Beach, California, not long ago. Several cameras were set up, and the show went on, that's all. Aside from the steamy language, it's like watching a live TV broadcast….

The life in the thing is Pryor's. I've seen him in a number of films—[Paul Schrader's] Blue Collar, [John Badham's] Bingo Long and others—in which he has been very funny and, sometimes, quite moving; his stand-up comic self was only a rumor. Not anymore. In the first 15 minutes or so, I thought this was a new Lenny Bruce, with a blistering tongue, a nastily knowing jab, an anger working itself out through savage but good jokes. For Bruce, the world was divided into people and gentiles: for Pryor, it's people and whites. And he scorches through those opening...