BEFORE: I'm sorry if it looked for a minute like I was going to follow the Vin Diesel path and watch all of the "Fast & Furious" movies. Wait, is he even in the first one? I have no idea, nor do I have any inclination to watch those movies. Like the "Transformers" films, it's a franchise I'm still actively avoiding, even after all this time. Maybe someday I'll be that desperate, but not today.
I'm still on Samuel L. Jackson, this is his third appearance in a row, and I swear this gets me closer to Mothers Day films, which doesn't seem appropriate until you remember that Shaft is a bad mother....
(credit to my BFF Andy for reminding me of this fact.)
THE PLOT: NYC police detective John Shaft (nephew of the original) goes on a personal mission to bring the son of a real estate tycoon to justice after a racially-motivated murder.
AFTER: I don't know, either I missed something in this film, or there was nothing there for me to miss - sometimes it's hard for me to tell the difference between those two things. I kept expecting more, like maybe the murder suspect had something else going on, he'd turn out to be connected to the mafia or have some larger criminal plan, but it just didn't happen, he was just a bigot who killed a guy. Which I get it, that's technically a hate crime and gets treated differently than just an average killing, but it still doesn't seem worth Shaft making such a big deal over. I know, it should.
Maybe it's the "Avengers" problem again - after all, I just watched Thanos try to kill like a few BILLION people, so it's going to take some time to get back to treating one murder like it means something. It's not for me to say, though, so I've got to get over it. But once I identified that this case wasn't really about anything bigger, despite the involvement of a drug dealer and two corrupt cops, it became all about what this film wasn't, rather than what it was. So naturally it felt like something was missing, or maybe that the pieces just weren't coming together to add up to something more.
I've still never seen the original "Shaft" film, and I probably should, because it's on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", and it does run from time to time, but I'm just not interested in the old 1970's "blaxploitation" films. They really should do something about that name, because it makes them sound unappealing. This would be a perfect opportunity to do that, since Richard Roundtree makes an appearance in this film, but I don't have the time for that right now.
I did like the bits where Shaft pulled a double/triple cross on all the people tailing him, and stashed the money in a place that made the corrupt cops look really bad, but it seemed a little too "Beverly Hills Cop", if you know what I mean. If Shaft is such a tough guy, he shouldn't have to resort to pranks like this.
Also starring Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Christian Bale (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Vanessa Williams (last seen in "The Pick-Up Artist"), Dan Hedaya (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Busta Rhymes, Toni Collette (also carrying over from "XXX: Return of Xander Cage"), Richard Roundtree, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Lee Tergesen (last seen in "Monster"), Josef Sommer, Lynne Thigpen (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Philip Bosco (last seen in "Nobody's Fool"), Pat Hingle (last seen in "Muppets from Space"), Daniel von Bargen (last seen in "The Faculty"), Peter McRobbie, Zach Grenier (last seen in "Robocop"), Mekhi Phifer (last seen in "8 Mile"), Richard Cocchiaro, Ron Castellano, Andre Royo, Sonja Sohn, with cameos from Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "People Like Us"), Isaac Hayes, Lawrence Taylor, Gloria Reuben.
RATING: 4 out of 10 broken windshields
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