Shaft (1971)
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Shaft Movie Review
Shaft is a 1971 blaxploitation crime film directed by Gordon Parks and starring Richard Roundtree. It’s a solid, but highly flawed movie.
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“Hey, where the hell are you going, Shaft?
To get laid, where the hell are you going?“
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The storytelling is the weakest aspect here. The plot is slim and not particularly engaging and the same should be said for the film’s pacing which is very slow and uninvolving. The movie should have been exciting and it lacks in the energy department. It’s so slow.
Richard Roundtree is very good and charismatic as John Shaft. The protagonist himself is definitely memorable and actually rather progressive. It’s a shame that the others aren’t as memorable, though the villains are solid.
So obviously blaxploitation films are a mixed bag when it comes to black representation on film. On the one hand, they are somewhat stereotyped and overly emphasized in race, but on the other hand, the protagonist in particular is a positive, competent hero who wins the day in the end.
Shaft is pretty much a product of its time when it comes to each one of its aspects. I would say that it’s pretty successful as a sort of noir mystery thriller detective film, but it certainly is not an action flick which it is considered to be for some unbeknownst reason to me. It has a couple of great scenes, but nonetheless the movie is surprisingly tame for 70s standards.
Now let’s talk about the technical aspects. The pacing is quite bad in Shaft, but the direction from Gordon Parks is pretty solid as is the acting across the board. The film is also well shot and particularly evocative in its dark and grim atmosphere. It’s definitely an atmospheric, for once positively very dark movie.
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The highlight, though, is its score. It is phenomenal and the selling point of the entire film along with its nature and place in history which is obviously important. Isaac Hayes did such a fantastic job as a composer here and the titular theme entirely deserved its Oscar win as it’s a lot of fun and pleasingly retro. The film reminded me of the seventies so much serving as a pretty strong time capsule.
Shaft is a flawed, but interesting 70s time capsule which is too tame in execution, way too slow in pacing and slim in plot, but it has a memorable protagonist and it’s an atmospheric, important and for its time quite progressive blaxploitation movie which hits more than it misses. The standout is its score with its very good, fun titular song.
