Coffy (1973) review

Flower Child Coffin (Pam Grier) - which is her real name - is employed as a nurse but secretly works as a vigilante who kills drug dealers because her sister LuBelle (Karen Williams) became an addict as a kid, but after her friend Officer Carter Brown (William Elliott) is badly beaten she pretends to be a prostitute (who goes by "Mystique") in order to wipe out pimp King George (Robert DoQui) and his boss Arturo Vitroni (Allan Arbus).  As one of the most famous female-led blaxploitation movies ever made it's largely filled with "cheap thrills" and plenty of sensational moments - there's a cat fight, racial slurs, a lynching and, thankfully, gratuitous nudity - and yet it's refreshingly mean-spirited, especially in a time (it's currently 2025) when even independent features are afraid of damaging their manicures or "offending sensibilities."  Grier might not be a super talented actress (her Jamaican accent is pitiful) but she's a commanding screen presence: it begins with her blowing a guy's head off with a shotgun and then, immediately afterwards, working in the emergency room with someone who needs medical assistance.  Shoo, puritans.