**½/****
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Vanessa WIlliams, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Bale
screenplay by Richard Price and John Singleton & Shane Salerno
directed by John Singleton
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Shaft is a weird combination of action drama and problem picture that never quite jells as either. Its namesake, a 1971 crime flick featuring a super-stud black private eye, barely resembles this cop-heavy, moralizing film. The updated Shaft wants to score points as both a thriller and a message movie, and only winds up defeating both purposes; nevertheless, the attempt at both is highly suggestive. The combination of the classic Shaft with an ensemble of new characters and villains is irresistible, and the performances patch over the holes in the script to create a film that, if not entirely successful, manages to give us plenty at which to look.
We're given an entirely new John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson), a police detective and nephew of the original who takes his job very seriously and as a result quite often gets in the face of his superiors. On one such occasion in 1998, he presided over a murder case involving a rich white killer (Christian Bale), who had beaten his black victim with a metal pole after he had been humiliated by him in a war of words on the inside of a swanky club. Claiming self-defense, he posts bail and proceeds to flee the country, only to return two years later and be captured by Shaft at the airport. The question remains: why would he return at all to face trial over a well-publicized murder rap? The answer is, to rub out the one witness to the crime (Toni Colette) and thus win the case on lack of evidence. The problem is, as the witness in question is laying low and too frightened to testify; it becomes a race against time in order to find the witness and make her testify before she either vanishes or is killed by her wealthy arch-nemesis.
But no amount of difficulty can deter Shaft from getting his man. Upon witnessing the thuggish killer receive bail after going through all of the proper channels, Shaft hurls his police badge at the judge and quits the force, pledging to bring the killer down on his own terms. The problem is, he's got a few hurdles over which to jump. There is the threat of Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright), a crime lord who meets the villain while he was waiting to post bail. Hernandez is enlisted to ensure the death of the hapless witness, in exchange for some upscale clientele; he also has a dislike for Shaft after he put him in jail briefly for antagonizing him. Worse, corrupt cops are also on the case, keeping on the lookout for anything that might even remotely resemble Shaft and his witness, the better to make a killing off a killing. It takes strength and determination to overcome such odds, but does Shaft have the upper hand?
The main problem with the film is that it belabours the point about the righteousness of its lead. The original Shaft took it as a given that its hero was on the wrong side of the racial divide, and his exploits as a black man in a white man's world were transgressive simply because he did what he chose and didn't care who knew it. By making the nouveau-Shaft a cop with a conscience and righter of wrongs, it capsizes the rhetorical virtues of the original: the empowerment of retro-Shaft came from his commitment to himself instead of his commitment to others. Retro-Shaft made the point that a black man was being flagrantly anti-establishment simply by walking down the street, thus any act that was made for himself was being made for all the black people in the audience who could only dream of Shaft's unfettered activity. The current film sacrifices this virtue by chaining him to a specific incident and a specific group of people; ironically, the desire to right a white-on-black wrong is what keeps the film from grasping beyond a certain level. It may be virtuous, but it ties into the same legal system that keeps him down.
The new Shaft also gets bogged down in an intrigue-heavy plot that doesn't quite make sense. Why, pray tell, does the Christian Bale character disappear to Europe and then return two years later only to be caught again? Granted, they keep letting him out on bail, but considering the media frenzy created by the case, would he be safe anywhere? Not in real life, but in the movie, he keeps walking around sketchy black neighborhoods completely unmolested. Furthermore, our allegedly straight-arrow Shaft keeps resorting to tactics that might make Mark Fuhrman blush, as when he beats one local drug dealer while a black-and-white sails by without a second thought.
In fact, any political message that director John Singleton might have had goes sailing out the window as he engages in miles of police brutality and complicity in same. "It's Giuliani time!" announces Shaft as he plots another illegal maneuver with a rag-tag collection of cops and hangers-on. The horrified compassion he brought to even the most conflicted characters in Boyz N the Hood is nowhere in evidence here, as blatant stereotypes like Peoples Hernandez and righteous cops in a corrupt force go against the earlier film's contention that white people want to kill black people. Worst of all, the ending of the film does nothing less than render the rest of the film completely redundant, making all of the hard work and danger come to naught as the satisfaction of seeing the villain stand trial is wiped away in a matter of seconds. The film's righteous anger is here blunted by wild inaccuracies and desperate cliches that do much to undermine the power of the film.
But if I have to have a Shaft-as-cop movie, let it be this one. Singleton isn't much of a stylist, but he's great with actors and keeps everything moving at a breezy clip, getting the most out of his questionable script and making those in front of the camera look very good indeed. Samuel L. Jackson is perfectly cast in the lead, which is predictable, considering that he's perfectly cast as almost everything. But the big surprise here is who supports him: Jeffery Wright is especially good here in the stunt role of Peoples Hernandez, and he and his equally evil counterpart Christian Bale provide many good scenes of uptown vs. downtown locked in a battle of wits. And even people like Vanessa L. Williams and veteran character actor Dan Hedaya all seem to be operating on some familiar wavelength. There is no grandstanding in this movie, and no expository passages that favour certain actors; everybody is on surprisingly good behaviour, working to keep the movie together instead of breaking apart for solos.
So in the new Shaft we have an idea at odds with its execution. By making Shaft a cop, the semiotics of the enterprise go haywire, resulting in a film that repeatedly contradicts itself. But by casting Shaft–and everybody else–so well and directing them with such skill, John Singleton makes the contradictions inconsequential, zipping past them in a vehicle for a fine ensemble that knows its place. There are no big egos here, simply good work, and if the theme and plot are somewhat questionable, they are also greatly irrelevant.
