Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

One neat little bonus of going on a Neo Noir hunt is finding those diamonds in the rough that come completely out of left field. Sometimes a film is hyped so fully as one thing that its never looked upon or considered as any thing else. This film especially so since its considered one of the first of its own genre.Shaft (1971) has been called the first blaxploitation flick, screw that and it's derogatory connotations (think Sergio Leone vs the majority of "Spaghetti" Westerns as a reference point), its actually not only a great PI film, directed by Gordon Parks (acclaimed photojournalist for Life magazine ) but also shot in a very noir-ish style by Urs Furrer. Between the eye of the director and the skill of the cinematographer the film looks beautiful. The shots of Manhattan, The Village, Harlem circa 1970 are gorgeous. It's sleazy Times Square/42nd Street at fin d'une époque, before Disneyfication eradicated it all.Establishing shot, an aerial view of 7th Avenue Manhattan looking North towards Broadway and Times Square. A cacophony of traffic blares skyward, we look down upon madly scintillating 42nd Street theater marquees, classic Hollywood product, Lancasters The Scaphuters, Redfords's Little Faus And Big Halsey competing with triple X features He And She, School for Sex and The Wild Females, this ain't Busby Berkeley Territory anymore. Isaac Hayes' soul and funk-styled iconic theme song begins to pulsate the title appears over a subway entrance as leather clad Shaft glides up to the trash littered gum stained sidewalk and jaywalks his way across the main stem. This title sequence segues into the beginning of the story when Shaft is alerted by Marty the blind news stand paper seller that two cats were looking for him. Shaft is based on an Ernest Tidyman and John D. F. Black screenplay from a book by Tidyman. The dialogs are all spot on in 70's hip jive. It's co-produced by Stirling Silliphant (who wrote late classic noirs, 5 Against the House, Nightfall, The Lineup and also neo noir -ish In The Heat Of The Night). What's sad is Shaft gets right what practically every Mike Hammer, the quintessential NY P.I, based film neglects, and that is a real feel for the gritty noir, on location, underbelly side of New York City. (save Allen Baron's 1961 Blast Of Silence, and Armand Assante's I, The Jury(1982)) and even the latter doesn't spend near enough time in the streets Shaft is a very plausible re-imagining of the classic private eye flick. The P.I. was always about cool this go round it is about back COOL. Richard Roundtree is perfect as the suave hip protagonist John Shaft, a good detective, grudgingly getting genuine respect from all. Moses Gunn is incredibly good as tough crime boss Bumpy Jonas showing quite a bit of range as he pleads with Shaft to take his case. Charles Cioffi as Androzzi Shaft's NYPD detective cop buddy holds his own and runs interference between Shaft and the department. Drew Bundini Brown is Bumpy henchman Willy, Christopher St. John is Ben Buford a former hood rat friend of Shaft who is now a black militant, Antonio Fargas is great as streetwise Bunky. Character actor Lee Steele plays a blind news vender. Shaft is a Neo Noir New York City wet dream, it hits on all cylinders, check it out. 10/10

Many years before this original version I had seen the John Singleton/Samuel L. Jackson remake version, I knew about the name of the leading actor, the iconic theme song, and it was featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I was looking forward to it. Basically John Shaft (Golden Globe nominated Richard Roundtree) is an African American private detective, he seeks out the gangsters in the Harlem neighbourhood, the New York City borough of Manhattan, and on assignment he gets into a fight with a couple of them in an office, it ends with him throwing one out of the window, the other reveals that uptown gang leader Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) wants to meet him. After a meeting at the police station, where he lies to Lieutenant Vic Androzzi (Charles Cioffi) and his superior about the fight, Shaft is allowed to return to the streets for 48 hours, he arranges to meet with Bumpy, the gang leader reveals that his daughter has been kidnapped, he wants to hire the detective to safely return his daughter, but this will not be easy with the escalation of the race war, i.e. blacks against whites, Shaft being a target himself, and of course Bumpy cannot be trusted. Shaft assumed Ben Buford (Christopher St. John) was a target, and not himself, together they find where the daughter Marcy Jonas (Sherri Brewer) is being held and confirm that she is alive, they end up in a gunfight and Shaft takes a bullet in the shoulder, but he recovers and tells Bumpy that his daughter is fine and that backup will be needed to get her out of the hotel she is in safely. The plan becomes like a military operation, Ben's men all dress as hotel staff to avoid arousing suspicion, to create a distraction an explosive is thrown into the room and the disguised men deal with the Mafia members, in the end Marcy is successfully rescued and taken out of the hotel where the arranged transport is waiting, as the others get away Shaft calls Vic in a phone booth, then simply walks away. Also starring Gwenn Mitchell as Ellie Moore, Lawrence Pressman as Sergeant Tom Hannon, Victor Arnold as Charlie, Rex Robbins as Rollie, Camille Yarbrough as Dina Greene, Margaret Warncke as Linda and Joseph Leon as Byron Leibowitz. Newcomer and ex-male model Roundtree as the black stud private eye who works his way through both gang activity and women is well cast, this works well for promoting equality for black people during a turbulent time for them, as a police and gangland story, and an interesting enough kidnap rescue plot, and of course the theme song (number 38 on 100 Years, 100 Songs) and original music by Isaac Hayes, who I know better as Chef from South Park, is fantastically funky, a watchable Blaxploitation crime thriller. It won the Oscar for Best Song for "Theme from Shaft" by Isaac Hayes (also nominated the Golden Globe), and it was nominated for Best Music for Isaac Hayes, it was nominated the BAFTA for the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, and it won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score. Good!

Picasso is quoted as having said you either do it first or you do it better.'Shaft', directed by the great Gordon Parks, does it first and leaves for succeeding generations to do it better, Later on, in 'Devil in a Blue Dress', we see Easy Rawlins as a more fully developed Bogart-like characterization. But one can easily make the case that this film broke the ground for the African American male in the private eye genre.The 'Bad ------' as a mythic heroic figure has been with us for a long time. He is found in folklore as High John De Conqueror and another figure who is sung about in blues songs named Stag-o-lee. 'High John' laughs a lot and is playful and somewhat happy-go-lucky, but when you cross him he will not hesitate to go for his guns. 'Stag-o-lee' does not clown around. He just goes for his guns and send you straight to - 'hush yo' mouth - '! All my life I heard tales about this 'Bad ------'; mostly from my folks when talking about a relative or an Uncle who was wrapped less tightly than the rest of us. He usually possessed a hair-trigger temper and was not adverse to beating down half a dozen burly whites before being torn in half and thrown into the Mississippi River. You could also slap a nickle off his fingertip and lose your life in the process. Richard Wright attempted to write about this personality type in his novel 'Native Son', but choked when it came to having his protagonist confront white males as representatives of the White Power Structure. This is what a real 'Bad ------' cuts his teeth on. A subtler version of this character is known as Ananzi the Spiderman, who shares attributes with the Greek hero Odysseus; but looming behind them all is one of the baddest 'Bad ------' types who ever lived, Shaka Zulu, but this is not the time or the place to discuss HIM. Meanwhile, truth was proving to be stranger than fiction as a myriad of 'Bad ------' types were being generated out of the Civil Rights Movement and the Revolution for Black Self Determination. Perhaps most prominent among these figures were Muhammud Ali and Malcolm X.This is not to discount the fact that Gordon Parks could be easily classed as a 'Bad ------' in his own right. This becomes quite evident in one of his autobiographies, 'A Choice of Weapons'. But it is important to understand how 'Shaft', along with Melvin Van Peebles 'Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song' and 'Superfly' came out of the highly charged cultural upheavals of the sixties and seventies. The impact of 'Shaft' depends to a certain extent on understanding it in context with its times and is definitely enriched should you have lived through the period as I have done.This period of cultural foment is so highly charged nobody seems to notice that one of the characters; Bumpy Jonas' daughter, actually has not one line of dialog in 'Shaft'! She is the object of the search and rescue mission conducted by private eye John Shaft and yet besides some moaning and sobbing, we find out absolutely nothing about her.The truth is Gordon Parks' 'Shaft' lacks an exposition or at best an inciting incident where we see the actual kidnapping of Marcy; Bumpy Jonas' daughter. Since we're making comparisons between John Shaft and Sam Spade, it would not have hurt him to have an attractive Gal Friday holding down the fort at the office. The lovemaking scene between Shaft and his main squeeze probably would have also gone better near the beginning of the movie. It would not have hurt also to show Bumpy's gang attempting to rescue Marcy unsuccessfully before hiring Shaft and then bringing in Isaac Hayes' theme music. It is also a mystery why the hit men after Shaft don't have a photograph of him or physical description of some kind to go by as they seek him out. I also think the first confrontation between Shaft, Bumpy's daughter and the mob should have probably been all dialog. What redeemed this film for me was the convoluted and well thought out Endgame that Shaft and his cohorts execute upon the kidnappers. When Shaft successfully pulls this off and gives the Police Lieutenant Vic Androzzi his High John De Conqueror laugh, I still feel a palpable thrill. After that, he strides off too cool for school as Isaac Hayes' Oscar winning Theme Music takes us into the credits.

The best parts about "Shaft" - those that really stand the test of time - are encapsulated in both the opening and closing moments: the main character strutting through the streets of New York City, and his telling off the police lieutenant on the phone (respectively). Right out of the gate, you know that this no-nonsense black p.i. was a big deal; especially forty years ago. Dude's constantly shooting his mouth off to superiors, and getting laid left and right. And when the chips are down, he's ready to shoot it out with the toughest of them. Combine this with Isaac Hayes' iconic main theme, and this recipe for success was a guaranteed winner. These days, the story of a private eye tasked with tracking down a kidnapped girl from the mob is fairly by-the-numbers. But I don't think I've ever been so struck by a guy simply walking the streets. It's a thrill to watch Roundtree go to work.7/10