private investigator john shaft is one bad mother, and everybody wants a piece of him: the white police of the nypd keep pressing him for leads; a prominent black gangster wants him to find his kidnapped daughter; and all the while every piece of tail on two legs wants a night with the man whos a sex machine to all the chicks. cop vic androzzi thinks hes got shafts number though: heres a guy who knows everyone on the street and how to get to them, with a reputation of getting the job done. even if his racist partner doesnt agree, androzzi thinks shaft and him can form a partnership. what he doesnt know is shaft is playing him right back, hustling him for information while giving up nothing in return. because shaft doesnt owe anything to the cops, and especially not to the white man trying to get him down! androzzi holds up a black pen to shafts face and tells him hes not so black after all. shaft holds a white coffee cup up to androzzi and tells him hes not so white, either. sometimes you cant win.

the shaft marathon begins! i couldnt tell you why exactly the new shaft movie has become my latest obsession: maybe something to do with the thirty year gap between the original and the sam u l jackson remake, and then a further twenty years between the remake and the reboot! or maybe its just a new sam u l movie without marvel branding. did anyone ask for a new shaft movie? in todays society it isnt that anyone asked for another cop movie with an african american slant, its that any opportunity to make a movie with an african american slant is embraced. dont forget that hollywood isnt racist! remember the good ol days when a big studio like mgm would put out blaxploitation trash like shaft and have it resonate the same way at the box office like tyler perrys material does now? im not black and i dont pretend to be educated about these things but it seems like black cinema follows a trend, from the authoritarian leading roles of the sixties and seventies like tibbs and shaft to show how far they had come, to this romanticized dream of reconciliation and independence we are seeing now between all the madea tripe. my partner loves black movies. for whatever reason they connect with her, maybe because their reality always feels more tapped in to that street level pragmatism that women appreciate in their teary eyed dramas like precious. but i dont like watching movies through the lens of the era they were made, and i certainly dont like movies that try to force feed me an ideal. i just want a watchable movie.

rant over! was the original watchable, then? the oscar winning (!) soul slash funk slash r n b soundtrack from isaac hayes is a highlight. other then that, its generally pretty dated on a production standpoint and i lost interest about halfway through. and i personally didnt think there was much for richard roundtree to stand out above other affable black action leads of this era. this will be a good opportunity then to see how this seventies counter culture icon changes for the new millennium!