Shaft

Renowned for its Isaac Hayes score, and as the first mainstream, commercially successful film about a black private eye, Parks' film is a hip, cool, entertaining thriller that in fact never really says very much at all about the Black experience in America; rather, it merely takes the traditional crime-fighting hero, paints him black, and sets him down in a world populated by more blacks than Hollywood movies were used to. Roundtree turns in a strong performance, investigating a racketeer's criminal activities, while at the same time trying to find the man's kidnapped daughter.