Gordon Parks Jr. was one of the greatest casualties of the collapse of blaxploitation cinema, a director with a distinctive, tightly packed visual style (cinematically far superior to the somewhat stilted pictorial work of his more famous father) and a remarkably bitter vision for this supposedly escapist genre. Super Fly (1972) was his first and most notorious film: roundly condemned as a glorification of drug dealing, it’s actually an acrid film noir on a classic theme—the hood who must make one last score before he quits the business. With Ron O’Neal and Sheila Frazier.
Super Fly
R • 1 hour 31 min • 1972