"Hotter than Bond. Cooler than Bullitt," movie posters proclaimed. John Shaft was indeed a shut-your-mouth detective to reckon with, a fact emphasized from the film's start by Isaac Hayes' Academy Award-winning Best Original Song and Oscar-nominated score. Richard Roundtree plays the smart, tough, confident lead, a private investigator whose hunt for a kidnapped woman puts him in the middle of feuding syndicates. Gordan Parks directs from a screenplay that Ernest Tidyman (that same year's Oscar-winner for The French Connection) co-scripted from his own novel. John Shaft is an icon of change from an era of change. Today, Shaft still tells it like it is.
Actors:
Charles Cioffi,Christopher St. John,Gwenn Mitchell,Lawrence Pressman,Moses Gunn,Richard Roundtree
Description:
Decent black exploitation flick about a detective who becomes embroiled in a war between black and white mobsters. Academy Award winning song, "Theme From Shaft".
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