Get Your Reps In: “Across 110th Street” Offers Much More Than a Terrific Bobby Womack Jam

Across 110th Street (1972)

The year 1971 taught Hollywood that (1) Harlem could win hearts and (2) the grittiest New York cop movies could win Oscars (see Shaft and The French Connection, respectively).

In the next half-decade, those tastes converged and exploded into dozens of crime thrillers with at least something to say about Black life, urban corruption, or both—and rarely with greater ambivalence and ruthlessness than in Across 110th Street.

The madness begins when three stickup men (most notably the ever-riveting Paul Benjamin) steal $300,000 from Harlem gangster Doc Johnson (Richard Ward) and the mafia. The robbers escape a firefight, but now all the forces of crime and punishment in New York City are set upon them, including two police officers (Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto) whose careers are headed in opposite directions.

Perhaps most famous for its soaring, titular Bobby Womack jam, Across 110th Street is defined by gripping, sweaty Dutch-angle close-ups and a keen sense that every character in the movie has someone else’s boots on their neck. They’ll have to shoot them off. Hollywood, Feb. 27.

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