Gordon Parks’s Shaft gave us the first really convincing black private eye. Movies about private detectives have always been among my favorites — they seem to be better than most other formula movies — and John Shaft, as played by Richard Roundtree, belongs in the honorable tradition of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and company.
He belongs because, like them, he keeps no regular company. Private eyes (in the movies, anyway) are loners in a way that defines the word. They live in dingy walk-up offices, sipping bourbon from the office bottles and waiting for the phone to ring.
These may all be clichés, but, hell, a private-eye movie without clichés wouldn’t be worth the price of admission.
We don’t go to Westerns to see cowboys riding ostriches.
Roger Ebert, 1971.

Though a bit of a guilty pleasure, the film is a lot of fun and offers a viewer a great opportunity to enjoy both a good action flick and THE portrayal of early 1970’s cool.
Definitely check it out.
Jeremy Kleinman