After a diplomat's son is killed while investigating a slave-trading operation, "John Shaft" (Richard Roundtree) is recruited to acquire as much information as he can and then relay it to international authorities. This requires him to travel to where the slave business begins-Africa. Now, as far as the movie is concerned, while Shaft may be in Africa he is totally out of his natural environment--and this film suffers as a result. To further elaborate, Shaft's greatest strength was his ability to negotiate the urban landscape of New York City using his considerable experience and attitude to their fullest advantage. Unfortunately, both of these skills are negated once he is taken out of his element for which he-and the movie itself-has to compensate for by relying almost solely on his physical prowess and blind luck. At least, that is how some of these scenes seemed to play out to me. In any case, in my opinion this movie fails to compare favorably to its famous predecessor "Shaft" or to a lesser degree with that of "Shaft's Big Score!". Even so, I liked the performance of Richard Roundtree and having Vonetta McGee (as "Aleme") certainly didn't hurt either. In summation, this wasn't a terrible movie-but it wasn't nearly as good as it should have been and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.
Review of Shaft in Africa
