Shaft (2000)

Everybody sing! You know the words!

"Who's the black private dick who had to return because Hollywood is creatively bankrupt?"

"SHAFT!"

"You damn right...Who's the cat who won't cop out when there's merchandising revenues all about?"

"SHAFT!"

"Right on."

That's right, the blaxploitation hero with the funny name is back on American movie screens, having been so accepted by the very honkies he derided in the intervening three decades that he has been deemed worthy of the ultimate honor: he has been used to sell crappy Mitsubishi automobiles. And right from the start of this film, which features a "Black Bond" montage of women and guns and a subtly overblown version of Isaac Hayes' classic theme song, you know that Shaft is now mainstream, however wacky and upsetting his idea that some white people are racist might be.

So what is the point of having a new Shaft, when the old one was doing just fine without any help from mainstream Hollywood producers? (And why does this film have the same name as the original Shaft's first film? Are we going to get "Shaft in Africa" next, or what?) It is incumbent on John Singleton and, to a lesser extent, Samuel L. Jackson, to either answer this question or to make the film entertaining enough that there is no need for it to be asked. Singleton and Jackson accomplish neither of these, turning in a mediocre cops-'n'-witnesses film with simplistic racial over- and undertones. A big, empty, meaningless film that yet fails to deliver the more kinetic pleasures it strives to provide, "Shaft" is both disappointing and kind of depressing.

The character of Shaft had to change somewhat for this update, it is true. Shaft's habit of responding to women who tell him "I love you, Shaft" with the immortal comeback "I know" would not have flown in the twenty-first century. Still, that was no reason to strip Shaft of his cool altogether. Richard Roundtree's Shaft took an essentially laid-back attitude towards his job and life, confident that his cool would be enough to get the job done and stick it to the Man in style. Samuel L. Jackson's Shaft (Roundtree's nephew, in a nice touch), by contrast, gets through his days mainly by seething. (Jackson seethes better than any actor alive today, but it seems to be all he is doing in films lately; someone should give him a role in which he can act sometime soon.) Both Shafts wear turtlenecks, but New Shaft wears Armani; both Shafts deal confidently with criminals, but New Shaft pistol-whips them endlessly. Jackson's performance is a pleasure; his delivery of kick-ass lines is impeccable, his determination always impresses, and he exudes the sense of righteous moral authority you want to see in your renegade cop working outside the system. But Old Shaft, our black private dick, knew that in the end, he would play everyone the way he wanted to play them; New Shaft, an NYPD detective, isn't sure and doesn't like it. In other words, while New Shaft is a bad mother, he is most definitely not cool and collected.

This plays into John Singleton's sort-of agenda, which is to show that black people don't get a fair shake in our American justice system. In showing this, though, Singleton treats the audience like a bunch of morons; he shows us a through-and-through bigot (Christian Bale, playing a rich, depraved racist killer, in a departure from "American Psycho," in which he played a rich, depraved misogynist killer) getting treatment from the courts which stretches anyone's boundaries of impropriety. As Bale proceeds through the movie, he gets several opportunities to demonstrate just how racist he is, making sure that he is just as evil as anyone could want. The simplicity of the dilemma presented here shows just how half-hearted Singleton's message is; he could have tried for something more complex and less pushbutton, but didn't. And the final ending twist that he presents is unexplained, disappointing and of dubious moral correctness, yet the film barely comments on it; Singleton is apparently so convinced of its rightness that he feels no need to communicate it to the film's audience.

During the time when Singleton could have been discussing a complex issue with the ingenuity and care it deserves, he instead presents a protracted series of car chases and gunfights (with comic relief from Busta Rhymes, who needs to rejoin Leaders of the New School and go back to rapping about detention and not having a car). John Singleton has many virtues as a director, but he does not know how to direct a car chase or a gunfight. The ones in this film are incomprehensible, overlong and boring. While the action scenes in "Shaft" from three decades ago seem antique to modern eyes, at least you knew where you were and what was happening at all times. Furthermore, action scenes did not dominate the running time of the original "Shaft" like they do the new "Shaft"; more time was spent establishing how much cooler Shaft was than his opponents. The new film would have done well to do likewise, and concentrate on having a few memorable gunfights instead of a massive clutch of them which will try any audience's patience.

Besides Jackson's awe-inspiring line readings (the moment when he asks the Hispanic gang leader "Do you think that makes me less dangerous or more dangerous?" is priceless), there's not much reason to see this film. And that is really sad. With the talent that went into this update, one might hope for something done with imagination and verve, something that could re-establish both Shaft's coolness and his relevance. Instead, we get a movie whose main message is this: whether Shaft is uptown or downtown, from now on, he'll always be from Hollywood.

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