Shaft (2000)
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Christian Bale, Jeffrey Wright, Vanessa Williams, Busta Rhymes, Dan Hedaya, Toni Collette, Richard Roundtree. Writer and Director: John Singleton
Review by Scott Hunt Movie Hunt: http://netdirect.net/~hunt/index.html
Rating: Near Miss (2 out of 4 stars)
Timing, the old saying goes, is everything. With the recent resurgence in popularity of 70s movies and television, what better time to try a sequel to Shaft? Although it's an exciting movie that briskly moves along, it misses the soul of the original. Aficionados of the first film might find that a bit unsettling. The original's wary pragmatism has been replaced by a certain idealism. John Shaft of the original movie was leery of whites and the establishment. He plied his trade in an insular world that gave him a measure of comfort. He knew he couldn't change the world, so he did what he could to better his little corner of it. Today's Shaft, an Armani clad Samuel Jackson, is much more naïve. This Shaft works with the establishment and is surprised time and again when it lets him down. It's a marked and noticeable shift in tone. I can't help but wonder how the newer film might have played if it took the same anti-establishment, racially confrontational tone. But then that wouldn't make for a wide based, commercially successful film, now would it?
Samuel Jackson is the nephew of the original John Shaft. He's a detective on the N.Y.P.D. who gets a brusque smack in the face when a racially motivated killer is allowed to escape the country. Bale plays Walter Wade, the killer, with a clench jawed bemusement at the melting pot that is New York. There's a calculated, seething hatred behind his smug smile that perfectly catches the skewed mindset of a sociopath. His murderous rich kid has nary a chink in his emotional armor save devotion to his dead mother. Eventually Shaft brings the kid in to face the court system. His arrest brings him into contact with another of Shaft's foes, Peoples Hernandez, a Latino drug lord.
The two men meet in jail and it's one of a couple of fascinating exchanges between the two. Hernandez quietly introduces himself to Wade despite sensing Wade's distain. He's lured by the twisted prospect of networking via the penal system. Wright takes the potentially stereotypical Peoples to a mesmerizing level, playing him with a strange effeminacy mixed with machismo. He knows he is society's scum, but has enough self-awareness of his limitations to make him dangerous. When he finally coerces Wade into dealing drugs for him, he does so with a coiled cobra's lethality. As the film ricochets from side story to gunfight and back again, Wade's menace fades as People's potency grows. His unpredictable rages and manipulations to better his station in life explode from the screen with the same fervor as Shaft's cool intensity. It reaches its peak when he mourns the loss of a loved one, emphasizing his grief with an ice pick. It's an image that will linger with you long after leaving the theater.
The link between Hernandez and Peoples is Toni Collette's waitress, who saw Wade commit the murder. Wade wants Hernandez to find her. She makes the most of her limited function within the film. At best she serves as backdrop to show Shaft's compassion as the two have a quiet conversation about her being a witness and how difficult it must have been for her to be on the run for two years in order to evade both Wade and the court system. Amid the rattle of the pervasive gun battles, it's a scene that lands with a loud clunk.
Busta Rhymes has a supporting role as a sidekick of sorts for Shaft. He basically serves the movie equivalent of television's wacky neighbor. Vanessa Williams has a whisper thin role as a sometimes partner to Shaft. Given the careening storylines of Shaft vs. Peoples, Shaft vs. Wade, Shaft vs. the system, etc, there isn't much wiggle room for her to do much.
Serving as totem of the first film, Richard Roundtree has a couple of scenes where he tries to counsel the younger Shaft on the ways of the world and lure him into his private detective firm. It's a nice counterpoint seeing the elder's contentment with the life he has made as the younger man is self confidently still finding his way.
Shaft is peppered with snappy verbal exchanges and gun battles along with some really solid acting. It's a fun, albeit, violent movie. Maybe if it didn't try so hard to please all it's audience members and wasn't so diffuse in trying to take the plot in so many directions, it might have been a much stronger effort. As it is, it's a nice start to what I imagine will become a franchise for the studio.
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