A film review by Sam Floeter Copyright © 2000 Sam Floeter

[Major spoilers included.]

When I heard that they were remaking the movie Shaft, I didn't think they we're going to make it as cheesy as the original, nor as preposterous or racially motivated. Let's have a quick socio-political recap of the original: In the seventies, a majority of the action films were geared towards the white audience, with little attention paid to other ethnic groups. The original Shaft was a landmark film that took all the elements of the white hero flick, and simply exchanged all the main characters with black actors. Thus the roles were reversed, with the bumbling white officers "trying to keep the brotherman down" while pandering to the ultra-cool of John Shaft, "the big black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks".

Now, leap forward twenty-five years into the future. It's the year 2000. The standards have changed. In this day and age, nobody cares if the hero is black or white, as long as he can kick-ass. Wesley Snipes' "Blade" for example, Lawrence Fishburn's "Morpheus", Will Smiths "Agent Jay", all of these characters have transcended, or rather surpassed, the banality of racial injustice as a driving force for vengence. They are not "black heroes" they are simply "heroes". So why does our new Shaft feel the need to rehash this political plotline inherent in the original and since then almost completely wiped away from the action genre altogether? As I've said, times have changed, racial tension is no longer a one sided manifestation that we can blame on any one ethnic group. In this day and age anyone and everyone can be a racist, which brings me to my first problem with todays Shaft....

A black man is killed for being black--thus Shaft kicks into action. He is, and always will be a peoples champ--it is the fundamental core of Shaft's persona. However, later on in the film, Shaft himself reveals his own racial indifference to whites by joking with his partner and saying "You know you're still a cracker motherf---er, right?" To which his partner replies "Sure, cornbread." or something to that extent. Immediately we have a problem because Shaft himself is a racist and a hippocrit. So, how in the hell can we as an audience find justification in his fight for racial equality? He isn't fighting for the betterment of society, he's simply waged his own personal vandetta against anyone who doesn't like black people. Okay, here's my next problem....

Christian Bale plays--who I initially assumed to be--the bad guy. Dispite my negative reviews of "American Psycho" I do like him as an actor. In Shaft, his character is a stereotypical upperclass whiteboy, whining, snobbish and constantly throwing temper tantrums. In the opening scenes, he kills a black man by clubbing him over the head with a steel banister after being humiliated in a bar. We hate him at first because he is a racist, provoking an innocent black man, calling him names and trying to embarrass him. We think, he deserves whatever he gets, and we cheer Shaft when he clocks Bale in the chin for his callous and almost Edward Norton-esque disregard for the life that he has just taken. However, Bale is next in jail and accosted for his shoes by a large black man. Bale beats up the would be assailant and keeps his shoes. Later, Bale is walking down the street when two large men provoke him, making fun of his skin color and threatening him for the sheer pleasure of it, he is mugged by Shaft, stabbed in the hand by the films second baddie, and basically has a crappy time for the rest of the movies duration. The point is, we actually feel sorry for him by the time the movie is over with, because we begin to understand why he has become a racist--it is the American History X phoenomenon all over again. The number one rule when writing and making an action film is this--the bad guy is not the victim...ever!!! The baddie is active, the hero is reactive. He is the predator, not the prey, that's why were supposed to hate him. The moment he looses that edge, he becomes human in our eyes, and we normally feel sorry for humans, we don't feel sorry for bad guys.

Okay, enough with the racial undercurrents, let's just talk about the film. The dialogue sucks, with the only witty repoitoire being Shaft's response to a woman asking him for a quick romp. "It's my duty, to please that booty" is perhaps the only memorable line in the film. Other than that, the only wordplay in the whole movie deals with how many different variants of cuss words the characters can throw into a sentence. The word "shit" becomes a verb, an adjective, a noun, a preposition, and the catalyst for much of the dialogue.

The action scenes are non-existant, in fact, the preview with Sam Jackson walking back and forth in Armani leather taking off his sunglasses every five seconds was more exciting and actually had more plot structure.

The second baddie in the film named Peoples, was a ludicrous character of stereotypical proportions--his weapon of choice? Well, since he spends most of his time in prisons, he has a wide variety of homemade "shanks" often found at any local penetentiary, and he can be seen sticking them in everyone and everything--including himself--as the movie progresses. It is an original idea, but when you see him waving a four inch icepick in the face of someone holding a nine milimeter Uzi, it suddenly looses it's flair.

As for Sam Jackson's Shaft, he looks alot like Keenan Ivory Wayans from "A Low Down Dirty Shame". As the nephew of the original Shaft, he actually fails to impress as much as Richard Roundtree who has a cameo in the new film. Shaft does a lot of threatening...there's a lot of talk without much follow through on his part. But his preformance was as solid as it always is, it's not his fault that there wasn't much to go on. Blame John Singleton for that, a director who's only good film in the past eight years was his debut "Boyz N the Hood."

My summary? Pay seven bucks for Shaft, and that's just what you get--the shaft.

	Running Time: 99 Min | Rated: R | US Release: June 16th | More >>

Related Links:

• Official Site
• Rotten Tomatoes: Shaft
• Upcomingmovies.com: Shaft
• Mr. Showbiz Interview: Samuel L. Jackson

Still the man, any questions?