Shaft (1971)

I have a little personal revelation to make about 1971’s Shaft. When I was three years old, the theme from Shaft was on the radio all the time and it was one of my all-time favorite songs. I would get so excited whenever it came on the radio. And even at three years old, I knew from those lyrics that whoever they were talking about was a badass. I don’t even know if I knew what “badass” meant at that age, but I knew Shaft was somebody you didn’t want to mess with.

Of course, Richard Roundtree plays John Shaft, a private detective. And as the movie opens, that legendary theme song plays over footage of Shaft walking around New York City. And those first five minutes basically tell you everything you need to know about this character. He doesn’t have to say a word. It’s just the way he walks, the way he carries himself, the way he navigates through traffic. He just exudes confidence. He’s like a man on a mission. And he dresses like a bad mother—. (Shut your mouth!)

In the film, a Harlem mobster hires Shaft to find his kidnapped daughter, and Shaft finds himself caught in the middle of a battle between the Harlem mobsters and the Mafia.I won’t get into too many plot details because, honestly, there’s not a whole lot of story here. But what story there is is interesting and entertaining.

The action might seem a little tame by today’s standards, but Shaft himself is tremendously charismatic. He’s funny, he’s clever, and he’s confident. And he’s a Black man. Now, that may sound obvious today, especially when you’re looking at the movie’s cover art but, back then, that wasn’t the norm when it came to depictions of Black heroes. There simply weren’t that many of them in major motion pictures.

Shaft was very influential in changing that. The character projects this incredible aura of cool that even my 58-year-old white ass aspires to be. But the character isn’t perfect. He’s a misogynist, he’s hyper-masculine, and some of his attitudes definitely haven’t aged particularly well. Sadly, back then, that kind of behavior wasn’t terribly unusual.

Now, although this is an action movie, when compared to today’s action movies it’s pretty low-key stuff. But you can see where Shaft influenced so many other movies that came after it.

Other than Richard Roundtree, the performances are sort of a mixed bag. The characters, aside from Shaft, are pretty thin. Moses Gunn, though, does a great job as Bumpy Jonas and really does the character justice. Christopher St. John, as the Black militant Ben Buford, is also fairly good. And Charles Cioffi follows that shady New York cop template almost to the letter. I don’t know if this movie originated that particular character type, but he’s definitely playing the familiar cop who’s somewhere between both sides of the law—or at least somebody who plays fast and loose with the rules.

Shaft was directed by Gordon Parks and written by Ernest Tidyman and John D. F. Black, based on Tidyman’s novel of the same name. The movie also help bail out MGM Studios thanks to its raking in $15,000,000 on a roughly $500,000 budget.

Would I recommend this movie to everybody? Not really. Some of the language is pretty crude by today’s standards. But if you like gritty crime-action movies, especially from the 1970s, and you haven’t seen Shaft, this is a must-see.

But man…that theme song just slaps!