Cleopatra Jones is an absolutely ridiculously fantastic film. It's filled with action, conflicts, car chases, bits of kung fu, police drama, dancing, singing and a few other things.
Oh! And the cherry on top is this obscure woman playing a Neo-Nazi lesbian* crime Lord; who runs the streets of a theoretical New York City.
I'm not entirely sure if they're supposed to be in New York. It looks like New York to me. But I'm a Midwestern Canadian so most of their cities look the same to me.
Anyways going back to Shelley Winters (that's the woman who played the Neo-Nazi crime Lord) she is really Hamming it up in this film.
She is just screaming and shouting and continuously. Also caressing and flirting with this one random girl who I thought was her daughter at the beginning of the movie but it seems that all her Mafia Associates just called her mother and refer to her in a kind of family fashion.
The film never says one way or the other if this girls actually related to her so there might be some princess going on as well.
I mean why not throw that on she's already a freaking Neo-Nazi pushing cocaine into mainly black neighbourhoods I don't think it hurts to throw more garbage at her.
So from what I can gather; Cleopatra Jones is this International super agent person for the United States government, who goes around the world; destroying opium supplies and anything else related to drugs.
But she ends up returning to New York because Mama (the Neo-Nazi crime Lord) wants her out of the picture and decides the only way to do this is by eliminating this local rehab house that a bunch of her friends and Associates work at to keep kids both off of drugs and to get them over drugs if they're already hooked.
They decide to use police corruption in order to unconstitutionally search the house in a vain attempt to find illegal Contraband. Which of course they find; because some of the police in the investigation are secretly working for Mama and plant evidence on a guy.
Although it's kind of implied that this one guy was already a druggie.
He's going through withdrawals later on in the film but I think the movie kind of forgot about him. It implies that the drugs were planted on him to begin with.
Maybe he was just super unlucky and he was both doing the drugs on his own time and got drugs planted on him simultaneously.
Talk about being at the bottom of the totem pole on that one.
So as you can imagine this is causing all kinds of problems. The police force is losing its mind as its Commander doesn't know who the heck's pulling any of the strings. Cleopatra herself is becoming upset at the possible loss of a rehabilitation House.
And there's a bunch of people trying to kill her too.
Mama's really not screwing around, she wants this woman dead but thankfully Cleopatra has some sort of Kryptonian in Disguise.
She can handle herself and just about every situation. She's a master driver a master fighter, Master negotiator; Anything you need her to be.
I could say that would make for a slightly uninteresting story given that our character is near perfect but the movie doesn't spend as much time with her as you think it would and it's all set up in such a way that her skills enhance the film.
Otherwise our protagonist would be dead.
Besides you're not supposed to overthink a film of this calibre. Nobody questions that's James Bond can get himself out of any situation so why should Cleopatra be any different.
Antonio Fargas might be my favourite part of the whole movie. He is over acting like no one's business. Playing the very stereotypical 1970s monster decked out in all silk white suits with a cane in his hand and a Cutthroat smile on his face.
He just brings a much-needed flared energy to the film and having to interact with Mama was really fun too.
Which is really strange because both actors are overacting in a very different manner.
Shelley Winters is over acting in a kind of play-wright Style where she's overemphasising her body and screaming out every word you can imagine.
While Antonio Fargas is over acting with subtle yet intense body movements. It's difficult to explain the difference in their hammy acting. It's something worth seeing.
There's these two guys known as the ''Johnson Brothers'' that Cleopatra hires to help her find out information on this crooked cop and I really wish more of the film was dedicated to them.
In fact I almost wish they had their own film.
There these Kung Fu guys who are based out of this little Mom and Pop Shop run by a woman who seems to be on the level but has her hand in the pot of crime.
The two guys are surprisingly fun and amusing to watch. As they bicker with each other and then harass their opponents whenever they're engaged in a fight.
I honestly think they could have held the movie all to their own. It probably would have been a better movie than what we got here.
See that's the biggest problem with Cleopatra Jones is it a little bit all over the place and it has way too many Side Stories going on. They could have cut down on some of their gimmicks and just giving us a more fleshed-out story that knows full well what it is.
However there was a very high chance that the people making the movie wouldn't have known what to do with a more dynamic character story or with less gimmicks. So maybe I should be happy that I got an entertaining movie that knew exactly what it was.
* Yes the person with homosexual undertones is the main villain of the film. The 70s didn't handle homosexuality all that well.
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