Directed by Gordon Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as the itinerant black detective, John Shaft, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's hugely successful 1972 feature, helped initiate Hollywood's Blaxploitation film craze, a series of cheap and sensational, but lucrative productions featuring provocative ethnic protagonists. Although Shaft offers a proud and raw revision of the typical Hollywood African-American hero, the tough spectacle of John Shaft's defiance ultimately contributes little to the cause of racial harmony and understanding.

Richard Roundtree in a scene from Shaft.

Provoked by the $10 million in profits of Melvin Van Peeples' independently produced Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971, the aging Hollywood studios observed that Van Peeples had managed to target a widely ignored new box office patronage. Three social factors combined to create a new public taste for successful ethnic "badasses" like Sweetback and Shaft. The rise of the civil rights and Black Power movements fostered a popular appreciation for the intelligent...