Shaft

An African-American detective is hired by a Harlem mobster to find his kidnapped teenaged daughter, and finds himself caught in a struggle among feuding factions of the underworld.
Genre: Feature Film Urban Action
Rating: R
Release Date: 3-MAY-2005
Media Type: DVD

Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Parks seems fond of certain detective genre clichés (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft had a couple of sequels and a follow-up television series, but none had the impact this movie did. --Tom Keogh