Review: Shaft

Police detective John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson) investigates the case of a spoiled, racist rich white a-hole named Walter Wade Jr. (Christian Bale) who kills a black student (Mekhi Phifer) after Wade is publicly embarrassed by the man. Everyone knows the smug prick is guilty as hell but the connections afforded by his rich father (Phillip Bosco) and the fact that Shaft clocked the young punk, see Walter Jr. given bail which he then proceeds to skip and goes overseas. A waitress at the fancy restaurant the incident occurred at (Toni Collette) also goes into hiding, fearful of the sociopathic rich kid. That certainly didn’t help the case, either. When Walter Jr. returns to NY he hooks up with local chest-puffing Latino drug lord Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright), whom he hires to kill the waitress before Shaft can find her and convince her to testify. Peoples doesn’t much like Shaft either, after having been publicly shown up by the bad arse cop. Along with his streetwise associate Rasaan (Busta Rhymes), fellow cop Carmen (Vanessa Williams), and private dick Uncle John (Richard Roundtree), Shaft tries to track down the crucial witness and take down the pair of crims, whilst having to contend with a couple of cops on the take (Dan Hedaya and Ruben Santiago-Hudson) to boot. Daniel von Bargen is Shaft’s arsehole boss, Josef Sommer is the Wade family attorney, Pat Hingle a useless judge, and Lee Tergesen is a racially insensitive but clean cop.

It’s amazing that this 2000 John Singleton remake of the 1971 blaxploitation classic still manages to entertain, because there sure are a lot of problems with it. That it still kinda works despite a clunky and stop-start narrative and a seeming lack of understanding of the central character, is chiefly a tribute to the innate coolness of Samuel L. Jackson. Yes, I think Wesley Snipes was born for the role, but for Shaft as written here Jackson is perfect. He’s cool as hell, and it’s not his fault that the film is playing as both a reboot and homage and ends up looking like a “Dirty Harry” rip-off. This Shaft’s not even a ‘private dick’ until the very end. It feels like no one involved really knew who Shaft is, and the film spends an awful long time finding an identity for him. Part of that may be an intentional ‘origins’ approach, but for the most part it’s just not great storytelling. The film looks slick as hell, but it’s such a disjointed mess. 12 minutes into a film is not the time for ‘Two Years Later’ to flash up on the screen. The film struggles to get off the ground because the first 35 minutes is a lot of stopping and starting.

Once it does get over that hump though, there’s some fun to be had here. The high point of the film is the opening title sequence and song by the late, great Isaac Hayes, who won an Oscar for it originally for the 1971 film. In fairness, you could say the same thing about it being the high point of the original film too because the song is perfect and one of the greatest songs of all-time. I saw this one in theatres and it was a joyous experience to hear the song in a cinema. The entire score by David Arnold (“ID4”, “Tomorrow Never Dies”) is actually excellent, and very reminiscent of Hayes’ score from the original at times. As I said, this isn’t “Shaft” but Samuel L. Jackson is indeed one of the high points of the film. Jackson is the coolest MFer in the room, possibly of all-time but his Shaft is actually less ice and more fire. This guy’s not unflappable, and gets angry. One of the comic highlights of the film is Shaft angrily chasing after a suspect and shouting ‘Don’t make me chase you, you’re gonna piss me off!’, a brilliant line followed by the almost equally stellar ‘I’m gonna fuck you up for making me run!’. This Shaft wouldn’t suit Richard Roundtree but it fits Jackson like a glove. Well, except for one line. I seem to recall loving it at the time I first saw the film but Jackson’s utterance of ‘It’s my duty to please that booty’ doesn’t age well. Even when spoken by the cool Jackson, it sounds to me like a line that a white screenwriter thought was cool. Also, if you’re not gonna give us a true ‘sex machine’ version of Shaft, a line like that is gonna stand out like a sore thumb anyway since this Shaft merely flirts and even then only on one occasion. Instead, this John Shaft is seen pistol-whipping a young gang-banger while screaming ‘What’s my name?!’, which is brilliant. The nod he gives a passing white police officer says a lot too.

Jackson is pretty well backed-up by an eclectic cast of which the standout is Christian Bale. I’m not a Bale fan in the slightest, but here he’s perfectly punchable and slimy. Yes, he’s playing a slight variation on Patrick Bateman, but for me this is the better performance (and the slightly better film, too). Bale’s racist rich prick Walter Wade is quite possibly one of the slimiest and most detestable villains of the early 00s. This is the kind of guy so secure in his rich white privilege that he doesn’t even bother to barely conceal his contempt for people of ‘lesser means’ than him. It’s my favourite Christian Bale performance to date. Also providing lively colour is Jeffrey Wright. Like Bale, I’m not normally a Wright fan as I find him overly mannered to no great purpose. However, as Tony Montana-wannabe Peoples Hernandez, he’s hilarious in this. Bale’s Wade brings enough menace that Wright’s Peoples can just chew the scenery as a chest-puffing wannabe who you nonetheless don’t want to sleep on. Toni Collette doesn’t get the best role of her career here, but she and Vanessa Williams are nonetheless fine. We also get terrific cameos by original “Shaft” director Gordon Parks Sr. as the chess-playing Mr. P, and long-serving character actor Phillip Bosco as Wade’s rich prick father. Look out for a pre-famous Elizabeth Banks as one of Mekhi Phifer’s friends in the opening scene. In what is a pretty solid cast full of familiar faces (Josef Sommer, Daniel von Bargen, Dan Hedaya, Gloria Reueben, Lawrence Taylor, Lee Tergesen, etc.) I do think it was a little bit of a mistake to cast Pat Hingle as a judge for one scene. That to me just adds to the whole “Dirty Harry” vibe, and stuck in my craw a bit. On the plus side, original John Shaft himself Richard Roundtree thankfully gets more than just a token walk-on here playing Jackson’s Uncle John Shaft. The dude is a perfectly fine actor and for me gets the best moment in the film outside of the song when he exits a scene with two chicks on his arms. That guy right there is the ‘Black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks’. Damn right. I guess his presence as ‘Uncle John’ is also meant to allow this version of the film and character to technically be different and stand on its own. Fine, except it’s a “Dirty Harry” wannabe instead.

This is an entertaining film and frankly made better than a lot of blaxploitation films I could name. It is not however “Shaft”, it’s not better than “Shaft”, and it should’ve been a lot better than it is. The screenplay is by the trio of director Singleton (whose best films are “Boyz N the Hood”, “Higher Learning”, and “Rosewood”, the latter two very underrated), Richard Price (“Bloodbrothers”, “Sea of Love”, “Freedomland”), and Shane Salerno (“Armageddon”, “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem”), which may explain why it plays so disjointedly. 

Rating: B-