Excellent, a Must See

Brilliant and touching

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

While I'm not saying that "Cleopatra Jones" is a BAD example of the blaxploitation genre - it's fun to a certain degree - there are some aspects of it that will likely disappoint viewers in this day and age. The movie is indeed well produced, and while Tamara Dobson is a little awkward in the moments involving action, she does otherwise make a charismatic lead. As the lead bad guy, Shelley Winters is campy and a lot of fun in her scenes. Strangely, however, she only appears for a few minutes in total - a movie like this really needs a villain who regularly shows up to cause trouble. Another problem with the screenplay is that Cleopatra Jones seems mighty slow tracking down the bad guys - her investigation moves at a crawl. It's also strange that Cleopatra Jones is also offscreen several times for significant periods of time. Despite these problems, the movie is still worth a look. It is occasionally fun, and it's one of the few blaxploitation movies outside of Pam Grier movies to showcase a black actress in a lead role.

Cleopatra Jones is a well made little movie, which isn't something you can say for all of its "blaxploitation" brethren. While the genre has its own distinct charms, they often don't include finely tuned storytelling or high quality filmmaking. This one, though, can stand up side-by-side with the mainstream drive-in fare of its era. More wish fulfillment than earnest tale of urban struggle, this motion picture combines a statuesque leading lady, some decent 1970s karate, the exaggerated antics of Shelley Winters and a surprisingly strong performance by Bernie Casey into a tale that never loses its cool or its sense of humor.Cleopatra Jones (Tamara Dobson) is a U.S. special agent fighting the international drug trade who is summoned back to Los Angeles to combat the evil machinations of Mommy (Shelley Winters), a drug lord with an explosive temper and a vaudevillian personality. Mommy uses her contacts in law enforcement to put the squeeze on a neighborhood center that helps recovering addicts which just so happens to be run by Jones' proud and defiant lover, Rueben (Bernie Casey). But Mommy has more to worry about than a super-stylish fed. One of her criminal underlings, Doodlebug Simkins (Antonio Fargas), is rebelling against her rule. That dispute is what ultimately gives Jones, Rueben, the karate-chopping Johnson brothers (Caro Kenyatta and Albert Popwell) and a whole African-American neighborhood of butt-kickers the chance to take down Mommy once and for all.If you're wondering where this flick fits in the "blaxploitation" spectrum, the cops here are all white and they're all basically decent guys except for one racist who's laughed at more than feared and gets what he deserves in the end. This story runs on white guilt instead of black pride.Though she's the star and the title of the show, Cleopatra Jones is a passive bystander for much of the plot. The story largely turns on the ambition and tribulations of Doodlebug Simkins while Jones mostly saunters into situations, dishes out beautiful smiles and beatings with equal relish and then is on her way again. Tamara Dobson has such a striking presence, however, that you barely notice and don't care.Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, this is a fun romp that doesn't carry a lot of social or cultural weight to it. It's not going to make you think about much, unless it's the sheer awesomeness of Jones' sports car. It's so compact and low to the ground, the driver's side roof has to swing up so she can get in and out with her headgear or gorgeous afro intact. If you're looking for a gentle introduction to "blaxploitation" cinema or just a good time, give Cleopatra Jones a try.

I saw this film the weekend it came out in 1973 in downtown Baltimore, Tamara Dobson's hometown. Although that was 36 years ago, I remember it very well.1973 was about 5 years past the golden age of the beautiful but unbeatable-in-a-fight female heroine. A total fantasy, but as a middle-aged woman now, I still sometimes ask myself "What would Emma Peele do?" I found the early '70's heroines to be complete wimps compared to the late 60's heroines.So when the ad campaign hit in 1973 for "Tamara Dobson IS Cleopatra Jones," with the poster of the tall gun-toting Ms. Dobson, I begged and begged to go.I went downtown with an older woman friend of the family, and the two of us were literally the only white people in the entire packed theater of black people.In the film. the villains are all white and the good guys are all black. Also, there are many many scenes in which white people are killed by black people. During these scenes, the theater cheered wildly. This is probably not something you would notice watching the film on T.V., but believe me, if you are one of two white people in the theater, it makes a big impression.There was also a well-written and clever scene in the film in which one of Cleopatra's male assistants is lying in wait for the white villains. When they arrive, he pulls a gun on them and says "Guess what just jumped out of the woodpile?" The older woman who took me to the movie was southern. She thought this joke was hysterical and kept trying to explain it to me several times, with her extremely clear explanations catching the attention of everyone sitting around us. For those of you not blessed by an older southern friend, the phrase "Guess what just jumped out of the woodpile?" refers to the expression "N-word in the woodpile," a southern term for an unpleasant surprise.So what did I learn in my trip to the movies? 1) The term "blaxploitation" is totally false. This "blaxploitation" movie seemed to be about blacks who were superior in every way to whites, both morally and physically.2) It is really scary and uncomfortable being in the minority.

I suppose that as a conservative, I should give this movie points for avoiding the normal anti-establishment "blaxploitation" theme (you can't get much more establishment than being a federal agent during the Nixon Administration) and showing blacks working within the system to effect change.But I can't.The only thing that makes John Shaft the cultural icon that he is, is the fact that he was meant to frighten middle-class white people. Without the whole "black man standing up to whitey's system" aspect, *Shaft* is just another dime-a-dozen, derivative private-eye flick (and the sex scenes, effective in the 70s as a play on the "oversexed black man" stereotype, seem pretty sleazy now).And *Cleopatra Jones* is just another dime-a-dozen, derivative supercop flick. Here, the "black thing" is merely a gimmick. It could have been made with an all-white cast with very few changes.Even considered purely as an action movie, it fails. Even the cool car chase has some editing problems, and Tamara Dobson, though a stunningly beautiful woman, simply doesn't have the moves for the fight scenes.About the only really enjoyable scenes are those involving Doodlebug (Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas) and his henchmen.