Shaft

The best part of Shaft is the beginning: to the sound of the music of Isaac Hayes, a man steps out of the subway in Times Square. He is wearing a full-length brown leather coat. He is sure of himself, so much so that he crosses the street against busy traffic. When a taxi honks at him, he lips it the bird. Then the lyrics start: "Who's the black dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?" Shaft!

Shaft is more interesting culturally than it is as a piece of art. The acting is consistently bad, the dialogue atrocious, the editing choppy, the plot doesn't make much sense. But it was the first Hollywood film that had a black actor in the leading role (this was 1971) and was the center of the blaxploitation movement. As played by Richard Roundtree, John Shaft did not cower from anything. let alone the white man.

Shaft is a private eye who knows all the angles. Two of Bumpy Jones' henchman are looking for him. He suspects they want him dead, so one of them ends up defenestrated out of Shaft's office. But no, Bumpy (Moses Gunn), the crime lord of Harlem, wants to hire Shaft to find his kidnapped daughter. This leads him on a path to Black Panther-like revolutionaries, and then to the Mafia.

Directed by Gordon Parks, who was significant in that he was one of the first black directors of note (after being a well-known photographer), Shaft is the offspring of Sidney Poitier's slapping a man in In the Heat of the Night. Here we have a black hero who is tougher than anyone, and will take on anyone, including Mafioso.

Shaft is threaded with politics. When someone asks him if he has any problems, he responds: "got a couple of 'em. I was born black and I was born poor." When a Mafia hood calls him a nigger, Shaft just calls him a wop back. When another spits in his face, he takes a bottle to the side of the man's head. A black character showing this much power, but aware he is socio-economically behind the eight ball, must have been quite something in 1971.

Shaft isn't an angel, though. He has a woman, but he has no problem going to bed with a white woman he picks up in bar (after he smashes the Mafia guy's head). This allows for a little gratuitous nudity, but also reinforces the stereotype of black men as sexual beasts.

Isaac Hayes' song won the Academy Award for Best Song; he memorably performed it while wearing a shirt made of chains. The film was a box office hit and spawned a few sequels, and then a remake with Samuel L. Jackson as Shaft's nephew. But by then the notion of a proud, tough, smart black man wasn't a new thing. Shaft is something definitely of its time.