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Shaft's Big Score! (1972)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 9/05, 3/25

9/05: Shaft's Big Score! is a laborious film to sit through.

The story is too mundane to make me care about what's going on. Whenever there's action, I yawned. On the other hand, Richard Roundtree is perfectly fine, but he deserves better.

All in all, Shaft's Big Score! is the worst film of the franchise.

3/25: Slow and boring, Shaft's Big Score! has nothing on the original.

While the characters take their time walking and doing things, the story fails to grab my interest. The final thirty minutes is ridiculous when John Shaft managed to escape unscathed after being shot at constantly from the helicopter. Speaking of the latter, I'm surprised that it managed to go through the opening of a warehouse and still be flying inside.

It's nice to see Richard Roundtree and Moses Gunn back, but there's nothing they can do to save the lackluster film. Obviously, this was a cash-grab job for everybody when Ernest Tidyman should've taken his time to develop the script by thinking about what worked in the original which was hip and edgy. At the same time, MGM failed to resign Isaac Hayes because he wanted more money despite the fact a different song of his can be heard during the film.

By the way, Bumpy's right-hand man is played by Drew Bundini Brown. He used to be Muhammad Ali's assistant trainer and cornerman and was the one who came up with the famous line for him: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, young man, rumble."

All in all, Shaft's Big Bore! is more like it.

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