Review: "Shaft in Africa" (1973)

The 1971 movie Shaft, about black NYC cop John Shaft, is considered the greatest blaxploitation movie ever made and a cultural touchstone. Made less than a decade after the passage of the Civil Rights Bill, a just a few years after the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Shaft was a defiant, in-your-face cinematic masterpiece of black empowerment, of black pride, of black power, a middle-finger to The Man. It was a revelation. 

Shaft was bad mutha -- shut yo' mouth! A personal kind of man, and nobody understood him but his wo-man.

The movie resonanted -- big time. Shaft was a huge hit at the box office and its memorable theme song by Isaac Hayes won an Oscar. And in a trend of what the movie business was to become, it generated two sequels -- 1972's Shaft's Big Score and 1973's Shaft in Africa.

The first sequel was another big hit but the third one ... not so much. Its lack of critical and commercial success ended the Shaft series until it was resurrected in the 2000s with Samuel L. Jackson. 

So what's Shaft in Africa about? John Shaft gets kidnapped, thrown into a car, and driven to a secret location where he is tortured by hot lights -- "Yo man! I already got a sun tan!" he yells at his captors who then tell him that he's actually been recruited to go to Ethiopia and break up a modern day slave ring. He is told that he must lose his American attitude and fit amongst the Ethiopians. He must also learn how to fight like the Ethiopians, without guns -- in fact, he is asked if he knows how to fight with a stick to which Shaft replies, "Don't be telling the Shaft how to use his stick."

Then it's off to Africa and lots of fighting and badass stuff and action ensues. 

While not a great movie, Shaft in Africa firmly falls into the genre of NYC movie where a New Yorker travels far from home and gets tangled up into something crazy. It's about culture clash and people understanding each other. It's also about a problem -- human trafficking -- that remains a scourge today.

This movie is an oddity -- both a relic of the blaxploitation era and, in some ways, way ahead of its time.