When Shaft finds out that a dead friend ran a numbers racket out of his legitimate business and left $200,000 unaccounted for, he knows why he has suddenly found himself in the middle of a war between rival thugs. These goons are all trying to take over the territory of the dead man as well as get their hands on the missing 200 grand. Shaft has all he can handle trying to track down the money and, at the same time, keep his friend's sister from the clutches of the hoods. Shaft is back to find the murderer of an old friend on the cold hard city streets with a little help from his new friends. Shaft, the coolest private detective ever is back, and he's fighting mad this time! Richard Roundtree reprises his most popular role, who is in neck deep in trouble as he tries to avenge the death of an old friend. With neat locales, a smart dialogue, and a funky soundtrack by Issac Hayes, "Shaft's Big Score" is a movie that definitely defines the word "cool." The enforced jollity of that exclamation mark should be a warning. 'Shaft's Big Score!', if I may say so under IMDb guidelines, must be the best 'bad' movie ever made. It is bad: supposedly an action film, direction, plot and action fell asleep as often as I did. But there is an intelligence and skill here unthinkable in, say, 'Police Academy IV'. If Shaft is Bond, than 'Shaft's Big Score' is an anti-Bond film, subjecting the hero to structuralist scrutiny, exposing his weaknesses and limitations; in one sex scene, site of his virile power, he dissolves into abstraction, his body disappearing from the place where it is most needed. A kind of ghost story, the funeral sequence is amazing, as a coffin is lowered down, but the camera rises and points at Shaft. This supernatural frisson is betrayed by the drive towards a risible helicopter climax.
Oceagari replied
363 weeks ago