Shaft is a new approach to one of the great film icons of the 1970s.
He's tough, he's smart, he's cool, just what you'd expect from a man whose uncle and mentor is John Shaft, who, now as then, is played by Richard Roundtree. Crooked cops on the take, small-time drug lords, sleazy informers and sadistic rich kids ready to kill -- for police detective John Shaft, it's just another night in the underbelly of New York City, another shift facing down cops and criminals who want him dead and a legal system that thrives on mon ey, not justice.