generationofswine Have you seen it? No? There is likely a very good reason for that...it stinks.Like nearly ALL the endless remakes and reboots that have been plaguing movie goers for the past decade or so....all this is, is a heartless version of the original.It has no heart.It has no soul.It is a retelling of a film that we all love and cherish...and it adds nothing to the story. It improves nothing but the special effects--which held up very well over time--and in some cases belittles the fans of the original...particularly in the fact that they remade the movie at all, without adding anything clever to it.Like so many other remakes it is a hallow shell of the original.

view_and_review I can't talk about "Shaft" without talking about two golden performances: Christian Bale and Jeffrey Wright.This was the first movie I'd ever seen Christian Bale in and his performance was so good I positively hated him. I didn't simply hate Walter Wade Jr., I actually hated Christian Bale!! I can remember only one other actor playing the antagonist so well that I hated the person, and that was Rebecca De Mornay in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle." Of course, Christian Bale went on to be incredible in other movies such as "The Machinist", "Equilibrium" and the "Batman" franchise, but it took me some time to get over him being Walter Wade Jr.Then there was Jeffrey Wright as Peoples Hernandez. You mean to tell me he's NOT Latino??? No, he's not and that is amazing. His performance was stellar. He did such a good job that I wanted to see him in other movies."Shaft" was superbly written and the acting was even better. The story was good and I only neglected to write about that because it was secondary to great performances.

C. Sean Currie (hypestyle) "Shaft" (2000), starring Samuel L. Jackson, is a John Singleton-directed film and an update of the Ernest Tidyman literary character.This viewer was disappointed in the Singleton/Jackson film. Singleton is a valuable director and Jackson is deservedly a marquee actor, but this project wasn't especially enjoyable, especially based on the pedigree of the concept. The script just wasn't there. Maybe the paper script had more depth, but on-screen, there wasn't a compelling main villain in Christian Bale's bigoted trust-funder. Jeffrey Wright's Dominican drug dealer stole the show in comparison.Jackson's Shaft is robbed of the relative independence that his predecessor enjoyed in the previous Shaft films. Mainly, Jackson's Shaft starts off the film as a New York City police detective, who quits the force halfway through the film to be a vigilante after being frustrated with how the court systems deals with Bale's criminal blue-blood.Another aspect that can't be ignored here: The film has a literal throwaway non-dialogue credits scene where Shaft throws a candy bar at a woman he just slept with, and along with a provocative line said to a woman at a bar, that's pretty much it for the Bond-esque ladies' man quality that the first Shaft displayed.This was another reason that Jackson's casting doesn't work, because it kind of assumes up-front that this character is not going to be portrayed as any kind of sex symbol, compared to a Wesley Snipes or Will Smith (or whoever else might have been in the running circa 1999-2000.) Jackson's Shaft has a chaste relationship with a fellow detective played by Vanessa L. Williams, but that's it.About the only other part this viewer enjoyed was Richard Roundtree as the "real" Uncle Shaft showing up in key moments. (It is observed that because the age difference between Roundtree and Jackson isn't that dramatic, the character is "Uncle" Shaft rather that his dad.John Shaft's original screen adventures (the first, directed by Gordon Parks) were imbued with the evolving social politics of urban American in the early 1970s. In the first film, Shaft was caught in between the criminal underworld of NY (Bumpy's Harlem operation and the white Mafia), the police, and the activist militants of the neighborhood. Shaft would navigate dealing with all of those elements, but refused to be co-opted by any of them.This "Shaft" film is a competently shot, competently acted, by-the-books actioner, but it just doesn't have a satisfying narrative for repeat viewing. Stick with the originals.

The_Film_Cricket You know, it doesn't matter if this movie is a sequel, a prequel, a follow-up, a satire or a shot-by-shot remake. Shaft (this one) succeeds on it's own level because it rests in the hands of a skilled director. John Singleton cares about his characters, his story and has a sense of style.The story: A young black man (Mekhi Phifer) is murdered outside a local bar by a rich white racist (Christian Bale). A waitress (Toni Collette) witnesses the crime but is afraid to testify. John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson) knows that she can be valuable to the case but she runs away and the kid goes free on bail.Frustrated, Shaft quits his job and becomes a freelance vigilante. He tracks down the waitress but finds more resistance. Meanwhile the rich kid tries to pay a local drug lord (Jeffery Wright) to find her and kill her. That's just the beginning. The story keeps adding on until we feel that the gunfights and the chase scene are well-deserved and don't feel tacked on. These are the very things that I looked for and missed in 'Mission: Impossible 2'.The movie drops itself somewhere between 'Boyz N the Hood' and 'Out of Sight'. It is exciting, the action scenes are done well and most of the actors seem to be having a good time. Sam Jackson fills the role previously played by Richard Roundtree (who plays his uncle) and it's no surprise to say that Jackson is as fun to watch as he is to listen to. He is always fun in the right role and this script gives him lots of dialogue to play with.What I noticed first about this film was Singleton's refusal to have the whole movie focus on the central character. There is a gallery of interesting characters here especially Jeffery Wright as a Latino drug lord named Peoples. His accent and his mannerisms must have come from studying Al Pacino in 'Scarface'. It is crucial in a movie like this that the actor playing the villain is having a good time. His gestures, his voice, his delivery are all wonderful.There are a few lulls in the script, I was a bit disappointed by the ending but that doesn't matter. Singleton takes a formula cop story and surrounds it with a lot of fresh dialogue, good characters and of course that great music.