After suffering through Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and being underwhelmed by Shaft, I had low expectations for my third blaxploitation film. I was pleasantly surprised by Superfly, and I ended up loving it. The acting in this film is actually good. Ron O'Neal and Carl Lee , as the film's "heroes", play off each other very well. O'Neal's Youngblood Priest is serious and reflective, realizing his life as a cocaine dealer is not all there is. Carl Lee's Eddie is more flippant and ultimately corruptable. When he tells Priest he is OK with being owned, his character becomes simultaneously pathetic and scary, because we know there is nothing to stop him from selling out his friends. Unlike in SSBS and Shaft, the police are convincing villains, they are effective, corrupt, and pose a real threat to the hero (whereas in the other films they come off more as clowns).
Finally, the ending is unusual, in that the hero does have a climatic confrontation with the film's villain and triumphs over him, but his victory is a tentative and ironic one, and the viewer is left to doubt if Priest will truly be able to escape his cage.
It goes without saying that my enjoyment of the film was probably due in no small part to Curtis Mayfield's musical score. The music, the setting, the costumes, all scream "1970s" and I loved it.