I wasn't expecting too much from the director of Three the Hard Way, but Super Fly is one of the blaxploitation films most often mentioned, along with Shaft, Coffee, etc. as prime examples of the genre, so I still expected something. Frankly, I don't know whether to call it gritty and grounded, or amateurish (without the camp value afforded Dolemite), but the acting is often wooden, everything takes just a little too long, and the story meanders in a padding kind of way through the first two acts. And yet, there's definitely something there. Sometimes Gordon Parks Jr. doesn't seem to know what he's doing, and other times he has a lot of flair - the way cars move like phantoms at night, the bathtub love scene, the photo montage of the drug trade, the way he cuts from close-up to close-up... - there are things here my eyeballs (and eardrums, lets not count out the good B-tier funk) are really happy to have received. In the grit department, I have to admit I didn't know if this tale of a cocaine dealer trying to get out of the life would end triumphantly, naturalistically, or like Bad Lieutenant, so it maintained a kind of sufficient low-ebb intrigue, and then the third act was pretty satisfying, so I'm leaving the (virtual) theater on the whole happy.

Stylish seventies and great music around.

One of the greatest scores of all cinema!!