Shaft

A crime film set in New York. John Shaft is a private detective. He has his own office and works for nobody. One day two men come to it. They want to take him somewhere. Shaft goes out of a window with one of them. The man who wants him is Bumpy Jonas. He runs a crime organisation in Harlem. His daughter has been taken. Bumpy wants her found. From there the film is a search. Shaft moves through the city; bars, hotels, streets and flats. The police watch him. Vic Androzzi is a detective; he gives Shaft information and wants information back. There is a tension in the city. A fight over territory is about to break out between Harlem and the Italian mafia. There is a political line as well. Ben Buford leads a militant group and is an old friend of Shaft's. Shaft asks him for help. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but independence: its idea is that the man stands at equal distance from the police, the mafia and the militants and belongs to none of them. The kidnapping is a message. The Italians are pressing Bumpy to give up the territory. The last section is a raid on a hotel. Shaft assembles a team and goes into the building from the side. The city is inside the narrative. It was shot in Harlem and around Times Square, in real streets. Gordon Parks was known as a photographer and the sense of image here comes from that. The music is by Isaac Hayes. The theme won the Oscar for original song and the album was discussed more than the film. It was made with very little money and earned enough to save the studio. Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi and Christopher St. John are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1970s American crime films and genre built on a city. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the story is thin and the film's real strength is character and atmosphere.