Shaft

John Shaft is a private detective working in Harlem who is hired by a crime boss named Bumpy Jonas to find his missing daughter. Jonas leads the area's Black underworld, and the girl's disappearance points to a rival group, with tensions between Black and white criminal organizations threatening to spill over into wider conflict. Shaft moves between these factions while the police keep him under watch, and he works with people from different parts of the neighborhood to track down who took her.

The film was directed by Gordon Parks and released in 1971, the second of the eight features listed in his directing career, following Flavio and preceding Shaft's Big Score! Ernest Tidyman, who created the character in novels, wrote the screenplay with John D.F. Black. Richard Roundtree plays the title role, with Moses Gunn as Bumpy Jonas, Charles Cioffi as Vic Androzzi, Christopher St. John as Ben Buford, Gwenn Mitchell as Ellie Moore and Lawrence Pressman as Sergeant Tom Hannon. The credited cast runs to 43 performers.

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Shaft Productions for about 1 million dollars, the film returned roughly 12 million dollars worldwide, a strong multiple of its cost. On IMDb it holds 6.6/10 from over 20,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.4/10 from 439 votes. A critics' rating of 7.5/10 from 49 reviews places it above both audience scores.