Shaft
Directed by:
Gordon ParksCinematography:
Urs FurrerCast:
Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell, Lawrence Pressman, Victor Arnold, Dominic Barto, Tony King, Gordon Parks (more)VOD (2)
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While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, in a career-defining role), a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss (Moses Gunn) from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of seventies Manhattan in all its gritty glory that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore, the original Shaft is studded with indelible elements - from Roundtree’s sleek leather fashions to the iconic funk and soul score by Isaac Hayes. (Criterion)
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This picture simply lacks the intensity that would captivate you and keep you on the edge of your seat throughout. Although it is an action film, it is actually very slow-paced and plot-wise simpler, which also means that it doesn't really work as a thriller. Shaft is definitely an interesting character, but I don't see their potential being fully utilized here.
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“Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft!", says the film’s theme song. Shaft was the first one, he brought the blaxploitation genre to the world of cinema, he brought a black hero who has women falling into his lap like on a treadmill, who’s not afraid of blacks or whites, who, when needed, is appropriately aggressive yet smart. And it was a hit with black young boys from the suburbs who flocked to the film in droves. Yet the film's reputation is a bit ahead of its quality. I was expecting more wisecracks, more sex (2 girls in the whole film? - Shaft you’re disappointing), more action and more violence (three smaller action sequences don't pull it off). Even so, it's interesting, if only for the great atmosphere of early 1970s New York, the period clothing, the cars and the black junkies dealing. And the white population plays an irrelevant second fiddle, as it should be in a proper blaxploitation flick.
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