Shaft Review by Tim Wick
Who's gonna tell you about the best movie starring Samuel L Jackson that I
saw on Fathers day?
Damn Right.
OK, now that I got my obligatory Shaft theme song joke out of the way,
I'll commence with my review of this movie.
One might infer from the lame-o joke above that I didn't think much of
this movie given all the disclaimers I put on it. Nope. Liked it just
fine. In the summer blockbuster category, It certainly was better than
Mission: Impossible 2. It was, to put it as succinctly as possible, a lot
of fun.
Now, I think the movie was pretty fun, but it could have been my
situation. My wife asked me what I wanted to do for Fathers day and I
told her that I wanted to do two things: sleep in and see a movie. Having
slept 'til 11:00, all that was left was to go see if Samuel L. Jackson
really was still the man after all these years. Given I was doing exactly
what I wanted to do, I couldn't help but enjoy the movie. In fact, I
probably would have loved Mission to Mars under the same circumstances.
But I would have been entirely cognizant of the fact that Mission to Mars
was actually a bad movie. Shaft isn't a bad movie, so the comparison is
not really fair.
Shaft takes us back to the days of the 70's when the studios were turning
out cops & robbers dramas as if there was no other type of movie to make.
You know the films I'm talking about - Dirty Harry, The French Connection
and, of course, the original Shaft. One cop (or in this case, ex-cop)
against the combined might of a bunch of really bad dudes who want him
dead. You have the drug dealers, the crooked cops and at the center of
things you have the spoiled brat rich kid who is trying to get away with a
race inspired murder. It all sounds pretty formulaic and I suppose it is.
But I thought the pieces fit together pretty well. Jackson is suave and
cool in his black leather jacket and wearing a chip on his shoulder the
size of Manhattan. From the moment he learns Walter Williams (the
aforementioned rich brat played by Christian Bale) is guilty of murder, he
makes it his business to make sure that Walter is never too confident he
will get away with it. Bale is absolutely perfect as Walter. He is cold,
cocky and completely confident he will get away with it until Shaft
flashes him that look that says "this black man is gonna bust your sorry
ass". Then you see the chink in the armor. Walter doesn't believe what
he did is wrong - it was just a black kid after all - but he knows he
could go to jail for it. That scares him.
In fact, it scares him enough to make the ill-advised move of enlisting a
Hispanic drug lord to take out the only eyewitness of his action. Jeffrey
Wright plays Peoples Hernandez as a creepy cross between comic relief and
the truly dangerous part of the mix that Shaft has to deal with.
In a near cameo role, Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding, The Sixth Sense)
plays the witness that everyone (including Shaft) is trying to find.
Collette is one of those actresses I would pay to watch walk across the
street. She seems to instinctively understand the emotional core of her
characters and can really wring great performances out of small roles.
Her Oscar nomination for The Sixth Sense will most likely not be her last.
What holds it together? Shaft! He plays every side against each other in
the race to find Collette. What often frustrates me about movies like
this is the feeling that the hero only succeeds because he got lucky.
Here, you never feel like Shaft got lucky. Even when he was surprised, he
was cool as ice and he knew how he was going to get out of it. There was
only one point where it seemed like he got lucky, but in retrospect that
also seemed to have been planned.
Near the end, the screenplay gets a little muddy as it tries to do too
much without enough time. The movie only runs 98 minutes and perhaps
another 10 wouldn't have hurt it. I don't know, though, that really feels
like a nitpicky little comment.
Fact is this is a strong action film that will keep you interested and
engaged right up to the credits. If you are looking for a good popcorn
flick, this one should be on your list.
Can you dig it?
I did. Three and a half out of five beakers. Yayyyy! I have half
beakers now!!!!
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