The last, and least, film in the so-called Uptown trilogy, this 1977 buddy comedy is preachier than its more rollicking predecessors, Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again. It begins like The Sting, but then veers into To Sir, with Love territory, as Dave (Bill Cosby), a safecracker, and Manny (Sidney Poitier), a con man, are blackmailed by a retired detective (James Earl Jones, who would achieve pop-culture immortality that year as the voice of Darth Vader in the original Read more…