Shaft **** (1971, Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St John, Lawrence Pressman) – Classic Movie Review 4,586

Richard Roundtree heads a mostly African-American cast in a sterling, iconic performance as the cool, hip private detective John Shaft, in the culturally and historically significant 1971 American blaxploitation crime action thriller film Shaft.  

The hard-driving Oscar-winning, chart-topping title song ‘Theme from Shaft’, with music and lyrics by Isaac Hayes, did this 1971 blaxploitation private eye thriller no end of good at the box-office. But the movie is also dynamic, exciting and thrillingly hardboiled in its own right and proved quite a trendsetter.

Richard Roundtree heads a mostly African-American cast in a sterling, iconic performance as the cool, hip private detective John Shaft going through his bloody paces. Hayes also writes the essential Oscar-nominated score, which won a Golden Globe and a Grammy as Best Original Score.

Co-scripting (with John D F Black) from his own novel, the talented writer Ernest Tidyman ensures that there is nothing in the screenplay that Raymond Chandler would not have liked. It has even got the all-time cliché plot of a gumshoe seeking out a kidnapped hood’s daughter. Moses Gunn plays mobster Bumpy Jonas, the leader of a Harlem crime mob, up against the Italian mafia trying to blackmail him by kidnapping his daughter.

It proved a game-changing trendsetter as the first African-American themed blockbuster hit film with a predominantly African-American cast, explosively setting off the whole blaxploitation series of movies of the early Seventies.

Also in the cast are Charles Cioffi as police Lieutenant Vic Androzzi, Christopher St John, Gwenn Mitchell, Lawrence Pressman, Victor Arnold, Sherri Brewer, Rex Robbins, Camille Yarbrough, and Antonio Fargas.

The two sequels Shaft’s Big Score! (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973), a TV show, many copycat lookalikes and the Samuel L Jackson 2000 remake Shaft followed, and then Shaft (2019). Denzel Washington tried playing a similar Chandler-style private eye as ‘Easy’ Rawlins in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).

It is shot in Harlem, Greenwich Village, and Times Square.

The Shaft soundtrack album, recorded by Isaac Hayes, was also a huge hit and won him a Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture.

It was right to be selected in 2000 for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ as a prime example of the blaxploitation genre.

Ernest Tidyman (January 1, 1928 – July 14, 1984) is best known for his seven novels featuring the African-American detective John Shaft. He won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The French Connection. He wrote the screenplays for High Plains Drifter (1973) and Shaft’s Big Score! (1972).

The cast are Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, Moses Gunn as “Bumpy” Jonas, Drew Bundini Brown as Willy, Charles Cioffi as Lieutenant Vic Androzzi, Christopher St. John as Ben Buford, Gwenn Mitchell as Ellie Moore, Lawrence Pressman as Tom Hannon, Victor Arnold as Charlie, Tony King as Davies, Sherri Brewer as Marcy Jonas, Rex Robbins as Rollie, Camille Yarbrough as Dina Greene, Margaret Warncke as Linda, Joseph Leon as Byron Leibowitz Arnold Johnson as Cul, and Antonio Fargas as “Bunky”.

Shaft is directed by Gordon Parks, runs 100 minutes, is made by Shaft Productions, distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is written by Ernest Tidyman and John D F Black, based on the novel Shaft by Ernest Tidyman, is shot by Urs Furrer, is produced by Joel Freeman, and is scored by Isaac Hayes and Johnny Allen.

Release date: June 25, 1971 (Los Angeles).

It was a very nice little earner, On a budget of $500,000, the US box office was $12 million.

Richard Arnold Roundtree (July 9, 1942 – October 24, 2023).

Richard Roundtree, a cultural and historical pioneer hailed as ‘the first African-American action hero’, died of pancreatic cancer at his Los Angeles home on October 23, 2023, aged 81.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,586

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