Shaft’s Big Score!

• Directed by Gordon Parks
• June 21, 1972 (US)
• Based on Shaft by Ernest Tidyman

Shaft tracks down the killer of an old friend. Not much else about it.

You really can’t go wrong by starting off your movie with the hero in bed with an attractive woman and an explosion and Shaft’s Big Score! gets the action going just like that. You really have to build the stakes for Shaft (Richard Roundtree) and this does that in under five minutes. After the first one the Shaft character was larger than life and in that you cannot start small.

The assembled cast are talented individuals of the time. There are a few familiar faces of the 70s and even very early 80s in this movie. If you were alive back then and consumed minimum entertainment you probably saw them rather frequently making the rounds in film and television. Joseph “Stefano DiMera” Mascolo appears as mob boss Gus Mascola and Joe Santos of The Rockford Files (great show) is his flunky Andy Pascal. Mascolo’s Mascola (they did not try there) is not a brutish mafioso but rather well-mannered and almost an intellectual who must keep his loyal and ill-mannered subordinate in line.

Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is once again the baddest of the bad and the coolest of the cool. He takes no crap from anybody and is the one always in charge even if other people think they are. Roundtree steps on the screen and owns it once again. He never shrinks into the background even if he is not saying anything.

The character of Shaft projects power through masculinity. He is no wilting daisy. He throughs punches, fires his weapons, and tempts women away from lesser men. He is the best fighter and the strongest of the strong and it is all courtesy of the incomparable Roundtree. That stays consistent in relation to the first film.

While the first film took place in the dirty side of New York City, Shaft’s Big Score! takes place in a slightly nicer area called suburbia. Not that it strongly harms the film, but being more urban gave the first movie a flavor that others did not have which because this story largely lacks that makes the film as whole less special.

When Shaft’s friend Cal Asby (Robert Kya-Hill) is killed by a bomb, Shaft sets out to find the killer along with some missing cash. Not to ruin too much but that cash is in Cal’s coffin. How nobody noticed it or if the mortician was in on hiding it for some reason never really gets addressed. It is a nice idea that harkens back a bit to the original Ocean’s Eleven but there it made perfect sense while here it does not.

Johnny Kelly (Wally Taylor) is/was Cal’s partner in his insurance business/mortician side hustle (quite combo there) as well as a profitable numbers racket. Kelly is clearly hiding something and that hurts the story a bit. I do not mind the reveal of his connection to events but rather that it came so early in the story. Things needed to be stretched out a bit. And his attempt at a double-cross of his eventual partnership of with Mascola feels tepid.

“Bumpy” Jonas (Moses Gunn) makes a return as does his jerk henchmen Willy (Drew Bundini Brown). As a heavy he was better than the villain of Mascola. Jonas is calm and cool and threatening when he just talks. Mascola not nearly as much.

There are fewer clues for Shaft to follow in this than last time not that last time had really that many. He’s more following events that lead him to one conclusion or another. He’s not uncovering information but rather if something happens he’s pointed in a new direction. Not bad but the character of Shaft does have brains and muscle and should use both.

I need to say Shaft’s Big Score! has probably one of the more artistic love scenes I’ve seen in a long time. That probably has more to do with it involving two African-American individuals and the time this movie came out than it does any points of creativity. After all you cannot have John Shaft going around without wooing all the ladies that show up in the movie. My point is it gets the point across showing much of anything. A real bit of artistry. 

Then again there is a little more artistry here than in the last film. Such as Shaft’s fight scene in Mascola’s club. Admittedly it’s slow motion but it’s slow motion interspersed with the dancing girls and it just somehow seems a step above your average fight. As with before the music is just amazing. While Hayes did not take charge of the whole score he did contribute the opening song and it was a banger. And it is all done with some serious 70s cool.

This is a very good movie but not a great movie. It is a step above many but not the majority. Why? Because Shaft’s Big Score! takes place much more in suburbia than it does on the mean streets of NYC. New York City is not a character like it was before. It is the starting point but largely exists in the background of the film.

Having said that Shaft’s Big Score! is a good follow up to the cinematic classic Shaft. It has its flaws but manages to come close to its predecessor. If you liked the first film you will most certainly enjoy this!