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Special agent Cleopatra Jones (Tamara Dobson) is busy bombing (bombing ?)
opium poppy-fields in Turkey, much to the dismay of Mammie (Shelley Winters),
who could use the plant in large quantities to produce heroin. So she has a
clever idea to stop her that is just so convoluted from the start it has to go
wrong: Mammie has Cleo's favourite community center, a drug rehab center
run by Reuben (Bernie Casey), busted by the police, so she will come back to
America in person to set things straight. But Mammie plans that straight at the
airport, her goons will assassinate Cleo - of course it doesn't work, silly !
But Cleo does not only calm down Reuben & his men, she also goes to the
offensive, not only trying to smoke out the rotten egghorn in the police force
(which is led by sympathtic Captain Crawford [Dan Frazer]) & she tries to
get to Mammie via her right hand man Doodlebug (Antonio Fargas, great as usual)
- even though some of Mammie's assassins make an attempt at Reuben's life.
But Cleo, sometimes helped by the Kung Fu brothers Matthew & Melvin
(Albert Popwell & Caro Kenyatta) stops at nothing to get to Mammie, &
soon, Doodlebug, noticing that Mammie is helpless against Cleo, announces he
splits ways with her ... but even if Mammie is helpless against Cleo, she is
still more than able to dispose of Doodlebug & gang ... all but Doodlebug's
girlfriend Tiffany (Brenda Sykes) - who of course comes running to Cleo &
with her help, Cleo gets enough dirt on the bad cop within the force, detective
Purdy (Bill McKinney) to have him arrested.
However, as soon as he is behind bars the real traitor, detective Kert
(Stafford Morgan), whom Cleo trusted, makes himself known, & promptly
delivers Cleo & Tiffany to Mammie. & Mammie, having chosen a scrapyard
as scenery for their meeting, thinks it fit that Cleo & Tiffany should die
in a car that is sent through a trash-mincing machine ... but she hasn't taken
into acount the Kung Fu brothers, who soon arrive with their gang, & they
& Cleo give Mammie & her men a sound beating before Mammie falls into
the trashmincer herself.
Glossily produced by a major Hollywood studio (Warner, in case you
wondered), Cleopatra Jones of course lacks the down-&-dirtyness of
typical blaxploitation fare by independent producers, even the heroine is not a
streetwise sister with ghetto-roots but a special agent for the gouvernment who
goes through more outfit-changes than a fashionmodel on the catwalk, who drives
a fancy Corvette & has some knowledge of Kung Fu (though the fight scenes
are so poorly staged one might be surprised to learn they actually had an
Oriental fight instructor).
However, this apparent cheesyness makes Cleopatra Jones a very
watchable, entertaining & funny movie, even if most of the laughs, it
seems, are unintentional.
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