SHAFT (2000)
Grade: B-
Director: John Singleton
Screenplay: Richard Price, John Singleton, Shane Salemo
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Jeffery Wright, Christian Bale, Toni Collete, Richard Roundtree, Dan Hedaya, Vanessa L.Williams, Busta Rhythms, Phillip Bosco, Josef Sommer, Lynne Thigpen, Lee Tergeson, Daniel Von Bargen
In the new, somewhat improved SHAFT there's a scene in which the charismatic Spanish villain (played with more over the top Spanish malevolence than Pacino could ever muster), ever so slightly points his finger in the direction of Shaft (the take-no-shit cop whose uncle was the private dick who was complicated and got all the honeys, etc, etc) while the two men stand engaged in a not all that heated discussion. Shaft responds by violently seizing the fellow, swinging him around and snarling the way only Samuel L Jackson can "There you go mother fucker, you're under arrest for threatening an officer". And the audience whoops and cheers with about as much passion as I recall an audience I sat amongst booing James Belushi's similar behavior as a dirty cop in GANG RELATED. Is this because it's easier to take a black detective beating on minorities rather than a white detective doing so? Could be. The later conjures up all kinds of memories people want to forget, while the former doesn't really involve any thinking. By being black Jackson can casually call his black co-workers "niggaz", and beat on whoever looks at him sideways, just as long as he has a bad ass wisecrack ready. I could be wrong. Maybe the audience cheers for Jackson because he has about ten times as much charisma as Belushi. He's cool, and after Rodney King and Amadu Dialo, Jackson and SHAFT make police brutality hip again.
Like the DIRTY HARRY films before it, SHAFT gives us a couple completely hateful villains and then cordially invites us to cheer their horrific demises. Though unlike the villains of such past genre benchmarks, these guys are quite complex, actually more so than Shaft himself, who, as played by Jackson, is like one of the actor's Quentin Tarantino hipsters, only reformed…but not completely.
Christian Bale (AMERICAN PSYCHO) plays one of the charismatic villains, a guy so damn evil that when he manages to elude the corrupt legal system, he actually telephones Shaft to gloat. Bale acts the part in Patrick Batemen mode, with his discombobulated growl and pokerfaced in-expressiveness suppressing any emotion that might lay beneath his steely veneer. He's a rich boy who hasn't had to work for his riches, he received them via his father, and like many such characters he tosses his clout to and fro whenever trouble arises ("Do you know who my father his," he grumbles to Shaft after being cuffed. Our hero retorts "No, do you?"), though unlike many, he's absolutely fearless. He'll march into the ghetto and confront a gangster without back up or even a weapon. Usually these kind of rich-by-luck-of-the-gene-lottery fellows are made out to be pansies ordering their bodyguards to do all the dirty work, but when we first catch a glimpse of the Bale character, we know this guy means business. He sets the film's convoluted plot into motion by casually killing a black kid after taunting him with racial slurs. He eludes the cops several times, hiding behind his father's wealth, but is eventually tossed in jail where he and we meet what might be the an even more interesting character, Peoples Hernandez, played impeccably by Jeffery Wright.
Wright is a black actor who played the lead role in BASQUIAT, had some nice supporting turns in RIDE WITH THE DEVIL and CRITICAL CONDITION, but here he has truly surpassed his past, competent, but never really superlative, performances. Playing Spanish with a mellifluous sing song Puerto Rican accent, he's a cold customer who's able to turn on the charm with a bob of his head, maybe a slight inflection, then, when you're pudding dripping between his fingers, he'll back into intimidation by coolly staring holes into whoever stands before him as if to issue a silent challenge. It's hard to decide who's a more fascinating foil (though by the end, the film certainly has made its decision), and whether or not characters as multi-faceted as these deserve to be relegated to second and third tier status in a film called SHAFT. The two villains form an uneasy alliance and wind up involved in an elaborate cat and mouse game between Shaft, a Pam Grierish cop (played by a dressed down Vanessa Williams), two corrupt police officers (one black, one white…yeah I noticed…so sue me), and various other undesirables.
The character of Shaft may work as a law enforcement officer at the beginning, but by the end he's a vigilante much like the many 70's anti-heroes who broke free from the constraints of civilized law in order to do what's "right". He's Charles Bronson with attitude, and SHAFT certainly works (for the most part) on that trashy, retro level. The film is delightfully cheesy with elements that elevate it ever so slightly; hammy performances, clever hard-boiled dialogue, and a hero who could whup both Tom Cruise and Nicholas Cage's ass all while insulting their mothers. Unfortunately it doesn't sustain that tone for the duration. If it had, it might have been something; an exploitation thriller with all the low down thrills and subtle moral complexities to make it a true cult classic. Still SHAFT ranks higher than the rest of this years supposed summer blockbusters (at least so far), just not quite high enough. It's fast, fun and furious for the first hour until it degenerates into yet another movie where the bad guys can't seem to shoot straight…at close range no less. The film goes on auto-pilot during its inevitable conclusion with several low impact action scenes including a car chase that could have been spliced in from some low budget 70's Fred Williamson vehicle, some very poorly staged gun battles (especially for a summer action film), the horribly unfunny mugging of comic relief sidekick Busta Rhythms, and an ending that steals directly from NEW JACK CITY, though with considerably less impact.
Despite all that, SHAFT essentially works on the level it's supposed to; I can't say I was surprised when the whole thing digressed into a series of action set pieces, though I expected them to be a little more skillfully directed, this is summer after all.
John Singleton (a peculiar choice to helm a retro-exploitation pic after his various stabs at "important" films) imbues SHAFT with an odd style that's like an unholy melding of hard boiled 40's noir with 70's blaxploitation sensibilities. It's strangely jarring to see a classic pulp-noirish scene wherein a jailed Bale, after being harassed by a man who demands that he fork over his expensive shoes, beats that man, proceeding to stomp on his face while shouting "You want my shoes…here's my shoes!" (a bit almost as classically pulpy as the "I'll slap that pretty face into hamburger meat" line from THE KILLING), followed by a scene in which Jackson picks up a comely bar maid by cooing "It's my duty to please that booty".