The ever-cool Richard Roundtree, who along with the equally awesome John Saxon has played more cops than any other actor alive, makes his third appearance as John Shaft, the super-tough, super-smooth, oh-so-hot black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks and a most gnarly guy who's always getting into loads of trouble. This time our main man Shaft -- the ultimate bad-a** soul brother from the Big Apple hood -- goes to the motherland (that's Africa, homeys) so he can get the goods on an evil black slavery ring that's run by -- natch -- an odious bunch of wicked white b**tards, with the Major Nasty Man himself being suavely slimy French dirt-bag Frank Finley. Like, can you dig this funky s**t, baby? Well, frankly I totally dug this simply fantastic and wonderfully outrageous globe-trotting action/adventure treat.

John Guillerman's briskly efficient direction keeps the rousing zesty momentum humming along throughout, the action scenes are suitably rough, strenuous, exciting and dynamically staged (the stick fights in particular are the genuine happening article),there's a welcome sense of wryly self-deprecating humor (a male assassin in drag tries to plug Shaft in an airport bathroom!),the dialogue sporadically offers a few profanity-laced slangy zingers ("Baby this may blow your mind, but I don't want to [*very naughty word deleted*] you?") and the snappy pace never lets up for a minute, thereby ensuring that "Shaft in Africa" races towards a thrilling conclusion with terrifically steady and unwavering headlong brio. Moreover, the luscious Vonetta McGee lends her fetching, captivating presence as a foxy young African princess who helps Shaft out, Johnny Pate's intensely groovy wah-wah guitar-ripping score is very easy on the ears, the ever-wondrous and under-appreciated Frank McRae pops up in an amusing minor part as a bothersome henchman, the African scenery's gorgeous, Roundtree carries himself with his customary extremely watchable and winningly easy'n'breezy off-handed grace, and -- hubba! hubba! -- the tiny, adorable, curvaceous blonde looker Neda Arneric will definitely raise the blood pressure of any red-blooded heterosexual male with her smoking hot portrayal of Finley's sensuous, sex-starved main squeeze (Arneric's steamy seduction sequence with Shaft is so incredibly sexy and arousing that it almost melted my DVD player). A hugely satisfying and immensely stirring final filmic fling for blaxploitation cinema's single most engaging and significant take-charge man's man rugged individualist protagonist.

I am a huge fan of the original film in this series, SHAFT--having scored it an 8 and enjoyed every minute of it. Unfortunately, the sequels (SHAFT'S BIG SCORE and SHAFT IN Africa) were major disappointments--mostly due to really bad writing and lots of ridiculous story elements. In SHAFT'S BIG SCORE, Shaft has a gun battle with about a dozen crooks. They have a machine gun and tons of pistols as well as a helicopter. Shaft has a shotgun and a pistol and manages not only to win but shoot down the copter!!! Sadly, it only got worse in SHAFT IN Africa.

The main plot idea isn't bad. A group of concerned officials want to infiltrate an evil mob that sneaks illegal workers from Africa into Europe and treats them like slaves. A timely topic now as well as then. However, having Shaft be the guy to infiltrate was just silly. While the film was set in East Africa, Shaft looks little like one of these people--mostly because almost all Black-Americans trace their ancestry back to West Africa--on the other side of the continent. In addition, he didn't really try to use an appropriate accent throughout the film--only once or twice--and he didn't shave or cut his hair to blend in with the slaves. He simply looked like "Richard Roundtree: Movie Star" amidst the poor unfortunate villagers. Unfortunately, about the only thing going for the film is the action and extreme violence (for 1973). Sadly, even the great tune "Shaft" was gone and the music was rather bland throughout the film!

By the way, although it looked cool, why did Shaft bother to blow up the bunker at the end of the film even though the bad guy and all his men were dead?! It just seemed like a silly excuse for pyrotechnics.

Let's face it, none of the Shaft movies are exactly masterpieces but the character Shaft surely is a classic, who delivers some classic one-liners.

In this Shaft 'adventure' the creators obviously wanted to manifest Shaft as the African-American answer to the successful James Bond franchise. For most parts they actually succeeded in this. Shaft is even more sexist than James Bond and he surely is more violent. The violence is not always tasteful at times however.

The story is told messy at times. The action sequences seem to come out of nowhere and are simply just pointless at times. Also the weak editing doesn't help much.

I however wouldn't had mind it having seen more Shaft movies being made. Unfortunately this was the last (unless you also count the 2000 "Shaft" version). The Shaft movies have a certain hip 70's atmosphere, which I like and the main character is reason enough to watch a Shaft movie.

Great character, weak storytelling.

6/10

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