Content Warning: This article contains discussions of violence and sexual violence.
On March 15, 2021, the world and entertainment industry were saddened to hear the news that Yaphet Kotto had passed away. The gifted actor and TV star made his on-screen debut back in the 1964 film, Nothing But A Man, before tallying a total of 95 acting credits over his decorated 50-year career in showbiz.
After appearing in classic films, such as Alien in the 1970s and Midnight Run in the 1980s, Kotto took center stage as the protagonist of NBC's hit police drama Homicide: Life on the Street. He went on to appear in all 122 episodes from 1993 to 1999. Yaphet Kotto's immense talent in front of the camera will be missed.
The Star Chamber (1983) 71%
Peter Hyams' The Star Chamber is a legal crime-thriller in which disillusioned judge Steven Hardin (Michael Douglas) discovers a secret sect of fellow judges working around the law to punish criminals who slipped through the cracks.
When a suspected sexual predator gets away through a legal loophole, Hardin and the others judges hire an assassin to take the suspect out. But when Detective Lowes (Kotto) proves the man's innocence, Hardin tries to stop the hitman before it's too late.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) 72%
Kotto starred alongside Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair, a stylish caper film about a bored banker who injects fun and excitement into his life by deciding to rob $2.6 million from a Boston bank.
When insurance investigator, Vicki Anderson (Dunaway), is assigned to question Crown's involvement in the robbery, the two fall in love. The closer the two become, the harder it is for Crown to keep his secret and commit more crimes.
Brubaker (1980) 75%
Brubaker stars Robert Redford as Henry Brubaker, the warden of an Arkansas prison, who poses as an undercover inmate to expose the corruption, grift, and inefficient protocols of the jail he presides over.
To help gain intel and foster reform inside the prison, Brubaker enlists a trio of long-term inmates, including Dickie Coombes (Kotto). Two years after a vast conspiracy is uncovered, Coombes leads a lawsuit by 24 inmates, which resulted in a ruling that the treatment of prisoners inside the jail was unconstitutional and must face reform or closure.
Across 110th Street (1972) 81%
Kotto plays Lt. William Pope in Across 110th Street, a quixotic by-the-book police officer forced to work with the racist Italian-American Captain Mattelli (Anthony Quinn) to bring down murderous bank robbers in Harlem.
When $300,000 in mob money is stolen from a bank by thieves disguised as cops, seven people end up murdered in the process. As Pope and Mattelli pursue the robbers, Pope struggles to maintain authority over the increasingly corrupt captain.
Homicide: The Movie (2000) 86%
Effectively serving as the series finale of the show, Homicide: The Movie wrapped up the long-running David Simon crime series on NBC. The storyline focused on the assassination attempt of Al "Gee" Girardello (Kotto), a former police commander turned Baltimore mayoral candidate.
Following the attempt on Gee's life, the series' regulars from the show work together to solve the crime and put the culprits behind bars. The TV movie went on to earn a Primetime Emmy nomination for "Best Writing."
Midnight Run (1988) 94%
The deadpan humor of Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro are met by Kotto's hilarious turn as FBI Agent Alonzo Mosely in Midnight Run (the classic buddy road crime movie from director Martin Brest).
When a bookkeeper, Jonathan Mardukas (Grodin), is caught embezzling $15 million from the mob, the unrefined bail bondsman Jack Walsh (De Niro) is hired to transport him from New York to Los Angeles unharmed. As the mob pursues them from one side, Mosely and the FBI track them down from the other.
Nothing But A Man (1964) 96%
Kotto made his screen debut in Michael Roemer's 1964 racial drama Nothing But a Man, in which a railroad worker named Duff (Ivan Dixon) faces discrimination and injustice in his small Alabama town during the Civil Rights movement.
When Duff meets and marries Josie (Abbey Lincoln) against the wishes of her disapproving preacher father, he quits the railroad job for better pay. Struggling to find decent wage work, Duff also finds himself in conflict with his own father while trying to start a new life for family.
Alien (1979) 98%
In Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi horror masterpiece, Kotto plays Parker, the chief engineer of the Nostromo. Along with six others, led by Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) and warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Parker faces unspeakable terror when answering a distress call in space.
When the crew captures a mysterious alien creature and brings it on board to study its origin, the ship soon becomes infested by an aggressive, acid-spitting alien out to kill them all.
King Cohen: The Wild World Of Filmmaker Larry Cohen (2017) 100%
Kotto worked with the iconoclastic exploitation filmmaker Larry Cohen on his 1972 feature film debut Bone (pictured), in which he played the title lead character. As such, Kotto also participated in the celebratory doc, King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen.
The documentary explores the filmmaking career of Cohen, who specialized in low-budget horror and the blaxploitation genre in the 1970s and 1980s. Employing a truly independent, DYI style of filmmaking outside of the studio system, Cohen managed to make such genre classics as Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem, It's Alive, Q, The Stuff, and many more.
Blue Collar (1978) 100%
Blue Collar stars Kotto, Richard Pryor, and Harvey Keitel as a trio of Detroit auto workers and best friends who decide to rob their corrupt union boss after feeling exploited for low-wage work.
Directed by Paul Schrader, the buddy crime comedy takes a turn when the trio busts into their union boss's safe and finds compromising material they plan to use as blackmail. But when the union finds out, it tries to turn the three friends against each other and take their lives in the process.