I'm actually kind of reluctant to give my film buff friends the address to this site. As much as I love them, I find I am frequently at odds with many of their opinions on certain genres and films. Jack Hill's Coffy is one such film. Heralded as a classic of blaxploitation cinema, Coffy tells the story of Nurse "Coffy" Coffin, a woman determined to wreak destruction on the criminal underworld after her younger sister got hooked on drugs. Pam Grier's performance as Coffy was a watershed moment in blaxploitation cinema. Coffy was a highly intelligent, extremely capable black woman who used her sexuality to her advantage. This kind of character was basically unheard of before Coffy. Because of this, my fellow film buffs view Coffy as an indispensable classic. And while I certainly give Hill and Grier credit for the historical and sociological impact of their collaboration, I can't help but find Coffy to be okay. Just okay. The film chugs along from plot point to plot point, only occasionally making stops for scenes of gratuitous violence and sexuality. The most ridiculously over-the-top scene comes during a fancy party where several well-dressed women get into a brutal, prolonged cat-fight that ends with several of them topless and otherwise half-naked. Does it add anything to the story? No. This is one of the problems that I have with many movies that are considered to be classics among my film buff friends: they are willing to forgive shoddy and sub-par workmanship if a film contains something shocking or subversive. By that same token, they despise exciting, entertaining films if they don't fulfill their intellectual ego. I refuse to buy into either extreme. Yes, Coffy is a ground-breaking film and a gold-mine for scholastic study. But I still think that it is a mediocre piece of film-making.
6/10
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