Film review: Shaft (1971)

 

We've been watching the Rockford Files' first couple of seasons ('75-6) recently and it struck me that Shaft would've made a good TV series of that era.  There are a lot of parallels - both are private eyes (or private "dicks," to quote the immortal Isaac Hayes (who, by strange coincidence, guest starred in a Rockford episode) theme song, which so far transcends the rest of the movie it's not fair) and both have a love-hate relationship with a cop (Dennis Becker for Rockford and Vic Androzzi for Shaft), and both have friends of all kinds at all levels of society scattered here and there.  But it has to be said that the production values of most Rockford episodes, along with the level of acting, not to mention the star power (we've seen episodes that had Joseph Cotton and Jackie Cooper in them), far exceeds Shaft.  And add to that the writing.  But you can't beat the gritty winter-in-New-York-in-the-early-70s setting of Shaft, 

even if (as with Rockford, actually - was this a problem with the film stock?) it's sometimes hard to see it in the night scenes.  And, even though the dialogue, including in-your-face racial jibes can be a bit cringeworthy at times, the movie is undeniably hip, baby.  The basic plot is standard hard-boiled stuff: the private eye is a loner, distrusted by all the factions in town, which include not just the cops but the local black mob (led by "Bumpy" Jones) and the young Black Power activists (led by Ben Buford), and that's before the actual Mafia moves in to the picture.  But, distrusted as he is by all, he is also the only guy who knows and can work with all factions.  Shaft himself is, to be honest, a bit of a jerk.  He's got nothing but insults for Androzzi, despite the fact that Androzzi protects him from the higher-ups who want his license pulled, and while he has a girl who loves him (to whose profession that she loves him he replies "I know") it doesn't stop him banging the white chick with "titillating boobs" who hits on him in a bar (who later complains that, while he's "great in the sack," he's "shitty afterwards").  

But on the flipside, he is shown being nice to all of society's early-70s downtrodden, from the blind newspaper vendor, 

to the flagrantly gay bartender (who used the phrase "titillating boobs"), to the nice young mother who provides a place for Ben to hide out at a key point in the proceedings.  He doesn't care that the Black Mob and the young Pathers think of him as "being in whitey's pocket," but he doesn't back down from anybody, including Bumpy's thugs.  The basic outline of the plot is that Bumpy hires him ostensibly to find his daughter, who has sympathies for the black radicals, but when Shaft tracks down Ben, his building is surrounded and everyone at the meeting he was having is shot, except for Ben, whom Shaft helps escape (hence the need to have Ben hide out at his friend's place).  But then Shaft takes Ben to Bumpy to clear the air, 

and Bumpy asks for Ben's people's help in fighting the Mafia who are the real people who have Bumpy's daughter.  Meanwhile, Vic is left cleaning up all the bodies that pile up (starting with one of Bumpy's men that gets thrown through Shaft's office window (it's on at least the third floor) before Bumpy even gets to meet Shaft the first time).  It all ends in a very satisfying raid on the hotel that the Mafia have the daughter holed up in, which features the scene on the poster, which is Shaft swinging through the hotel window, blazing away.  

A period piece, let's say, but a not un-entertaining one.