Shaft (1971)

Who’s the Black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?

If you don’t know the next two lines to that song chances are you think Samuel L. Jackson originally played the detective being sung about and the singer, Isaac Hayes, got his start as the voice of Chef on South Park.

Well, if that’s you, it’s time for you to watch the original Shaft starring Richard Roundtree as private investigator John Shaft, the very definition of movie guy cool. As the posters used to say, Shaft was “Hotter than Bond, Cooler than Bullitt.

While it is generally lumped together under the banner of Blaxploitation films, Shaft has none of the clichés that other marked other films of that genre – there are no pimps in big hats and tricked out cars and no hookers in platform shoes. Shaft is a gritty, street level drama that could have starred any of a dozen white Hollywood tough guys. Instead, it gave the world what it needed so desperately in 1971 – an African American leading man in a serious film.

In the film, Shaft is hired by Harlem mobster Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) to find his daughter, who has been kidnapped by the Italian mob who is trying to muscle in to Bumpy’s territory. With the help of some young Black militants – and the White police lieutenant – Shaft comes up with a plan to save the day without kowtowing to anybody, Black or White.

Shaft is one of those rare films that was made more than three decades ago yet feels as fresh and energetic as any cop move being made today.

Starring Richard Roundtree.

IMDB Site.