Reaction: COFFY (1973)
The definitive Pam Grier role.
Fun. Transgressive. Definitely exploitative. Perhaps empowering depending on your feelings. Coffy is certainly one of the blaxploitation era’s canon films. This is the film that essentially brought Pam Grier to the cusp of stardom as a nurse who is also an avenging angel. Although there is very much a male lens through which the film is presented (countless scenes of nude women, including Grier), there is still much to take in watching a liberated black woman as an action hero. Grier’s Coffy moves through the streets taking out drug dealers and pimps poisoning society.
The social commentary of the blaxploitation era is present in Coffy. The main point is driven home as Coffy comes face to face with the orchestrator of some of the crimes. Throughout the film, Coffy seeks to clean up the streets. The point is later made about the symbiotic relationship between drugs and the black community. I myself did not agree with the point made, but in the 1970s, and one thing I’ve noticed in blaxploitation films, is that the prevailing theme of them is black characters seeking to gain what they can while taking down the white power structure. Coffy absolutely sticks to that formula.
