Grade: A
Synopsis: A nurse (Pam Grier) seeks violent revenge on the dealers, pushers, and moneymen behind her 11-year-old sister’s drug overdose.
Coffy is everything you could want in a revenge movie. It’s Pam Grier as the badass sister (literally) from hell, out to do whatever it takes to punish those that wronged her, and, to that extent, it’s nearly flawless.
First, it doesn’t waste time with a setup. Instead, it drops us right into Pam Grier shotgunning some pushers and takes off from there. Rather than waste 30 minutes on a big setup, writer/director Jack Hill instead uses a series of mini-setups, be it a scene with Coffy’s hospitalized sister, or the brutal beating of one of her friends, to maintain the character’s motivation while simultaneously delivering a constant stream of visceral thrills.
And what great exploitation thrills they are. From the cat-fight between Grier and a group of hookers, to Grier’s broken bottle fight with a now-lesbian ex-hooker, to Grier’s often bloody means of dispatching her victims, it’s all gleeful, over-the-top fun capped off by a great soundtrack.
Granted, some of the acting is a bit stiff, as are some of the action sequences, but really, this movie is so damn fun you hardly care. Grier and Hill reunited the following year for the pseudo-sequel Foxy Brown (1974).
