Across 110th Street

The grimmest and best-made film in the cycle, closer to a hard crime drama than an exploitation picture. Small-timers rob the mob and both the gangsters and a pair of mismatched cops hunt them across a brutal Harlem. Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto play the cops; nobody comes out clean.

It is bleak, violent and angry about the city it depicts, and Bobby Womack's title song is one of the great pieces of soul-movie music, later borrowed by Tarantino. There are no heroes here.

The point where blaxploitation becomes serious cinema.