Movie Review: Shaft (2019)

Genre: Action  

Director: Tim Story  
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Jessie T. Usher, Richard Roundtree, Regina Hall, Alexandra Shipp  
Running Time: 112 minutes  

Synopsis: In Harlem of 1989, private investigator John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson) is ambushed by thugs working for gang leader Gordito. Shaft's girlfriend Maya (Regina Hall) is fed-up with the violence and leaves him, taking Shaft's young son J.J. with her. 20 years later, J.J. (Jessie T. Usher) is an analyst working at the FBI's New York office. When his best friend Karim dies under suspicious circumstances, J.J seeks his father's help to investigate. Father and son need to get re-acquainted, while the trail of evidence leads to a mosque, a veteran support group, and none other than Gordito. When more firepower is needed, Shaft turns to his legendary father John Shaft Sr. (Richard Roundtree) for support.

What Works Well: The fifth film in the series that started in 1971, this version benefits from Samuel L. Jackson in top form oozing confidence and swagger, and the ultimately irresistible premise of three generations of John Shaft joining forces to eliminate evil. The sharp script (by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow) is filled with humour, profanity, and zingers, and packed with loud and intense action scenes. The rapid-fire father-son interactions are juiced by clashing inter-generational perspectives and a few character-driven surprises (J.J. does not like guns, until he does).

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot is overcomplicated, but also underexplained and reduced to filler material between the action set-pieces and buddy-movie dynamics. The balance tilts too far towards jovial, sanding-off the character's edge and any sense of jeopardy.

Key Quote:

Shaft: In general, women want a man... to be manly.

J.J.: I'm pretty sure women don't like being told what it is that they like.

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Movie Review: Escape To Athena (1979)

A World War Two comedy thriller, Escape To Athena is lazy, hazy, and tonally uncoordinated.

It's 1944, and on an occupied Greek island Germany's Major Otto Hecht (Roger Moore) oversees an archeological dig. The forced labour is provided by assorted Allied prisoners of war including Professor Blake (David Niven), Sergeant Judson (Richard Roundtree), and Rotelli (Sonny Bono). Hecht is content sitting out the war and keeping some treasure for himself; Blake obliges by recycling the found artefacts to keep the dig going.

In a nearby village SS commander Major Volkmann (Anthony Valentine) is ruthlessly suppressing the population, while Zeno (Telly Savalas) is leading the local Greek resistance using the whorehouse run by Eleana (Claudia Cardinale) as his HQ. The arrival of talent show performers Charlie Dane (Elliott Gould) and Dottie Del Mar (Stefanie Powers) as new POWs at Hecht's camp adds a new dynamic. Charlie has his eyes on ancient treasure hidden at a local monastery, while Zeno is anticipating an allied invasion and has his orders to move against the occupying Germans.

Emitting the strong stench of a group vacation for underemployed Hollywood stars, Escape To Athena develops ugly blisters in the Greek sun. The Lew Grade production directed by George P. Cosmatos attempts to recreate the classic vibe of movies like The Guns Of Navarone but falls embarrassingly flat. While the setting, uniforms and vehicles hold promise, Cosmatos is never able to assemble them into anything other than settings, uniforms and vehicles waiting in vain for a breath of inspiration. Lame humour rubs against context-free action and plenty of explosions, but all momentum is lost in a stupefyingly bland opening hour.

As the parade of stars galavant across the screen, none are properly introduced or provided with anything resembling a backstory, creating an  emotional void that devours the film. And so the actors default to importing luggage from other projects. Roger Moore continues with the worst of his Bond womanizing mannerisms; Elliot Gould believes he is recreating MASH; Richard Roundtree has no idea what he is doing and gets maybe 10 words of dialogue; and Sonny Bono reads his lines off the nearest tree. Telly Savalas was not told this was a semi-comedy and plays the Greek resistance leader absolutely straight, adding to the tonal confusion.

The second half is marginally better and features three action set-pieces, slapped together but still decent: the mish mash of Allies first attack the German troops in the village; then destroy a submarine refueling depot; and finally assault a monastery high up in the mountains. And still Cosmatos' grip on the material is ghastly. At one point a group of unidentified underwater divers surface to join a battle, just because. Then for no apparent reason a massive intimidating rocket is rolled-out mid-battle complete with mirror-helmeted starship troopers in attendance. The rocket plays no meaningful role in the movie.

Of course the stuntmen do all the work, and all the explosions do not obscure Escape To Athena as a collection of random scenes cobbled together in the futile hope that the editors can create sense out of nonsense.

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Movie Review: Shaft (2000)

A next-generation sequel and reboot, Shaft reaches for a cool vibe but stumbles on shallow stock characters and a dull story.

In New York City, detective John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson) roughs up snotty and racist rich kid Walter Wade Jr. (Christian Bale), who has just been arrested for a murder. The only witness to Wade's crime is bartender Diane Palmieri (Toni Collette), and she immediately goes into hiding. Walter is released on bail and promptly flees to Switzerland. Two years later Shaft tangles with local drug gang leader Peoples (Jeffrey Wright), then re-arrests Wade as soon as he lands back on US soil.

Again the justice system fails and Wade is released on bail, enraging Shaft who quits the force and vows to pursue private justice. Wade wants to silence Diane before she testifies against him, and hires Peoples to do the dirty work. Shaft gets help from detective Vasquez (Vanessa Williams) and taxi driver Rasaan (Busta Rhymes), but has to overcome crooked cops Roselli (Dan Hedaya) and Groves (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) in his quest to find and save Diane.

The original Shaft spawned two sequels, but after 1973's Shaft In Africa the series fizzled along with the blaxploitation sub-genre. A full 27 years later the 2000 entry picks up with the nephew of the original character in the lead role. Richard Roundtree does get to reprise his star-making turn in a few incidental scenes, still as a private investigator and now waiting for his nephew to experience the futility of working within the system.

The problem with Shaft in 2000 is its utter routineness. Director and co-writer John Singleton is unable to elevate the film beyond standard-fare Hollywood-style police work and masculine posturing, with frequent nods to broken officialdom perforated by corruption and justice tilted heavily towards white rich people. These are well-worn themes, and no amount of profanity (in almost every sentence) can elevate the film towards a new edge.

The script certainly does not help. The find-the-witness central quest is misplaced into an environment where scores are settled with bullets flying around every corner and dead bodies piling up on the street. The thought that after all the killing some sort of court case will determine Wade's fate is quaint, and too thin a thread to hang a film on. The complete absence of any character backstories adds a lightweight feel to 99 minutes of superficiality.

Samuel L. Jackson slices through the film oozing self-confidence but lacking any depth. Singleton delivers a few deft directorial touches and handles the frequent shootouts with decent cohesion, and Isaac Hayes' classic Theme from Shaft enlivens the otherwise forgettable soundtrack. But rather than a cool cat, in 2000 Shaft is just another angry cop.

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Movie Review: Shaft (1971)

A seminal blaxploitation action film, Shaft provides low budget urban thrills laced with plenty of race commentary.

In New York City, private detective John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) fends off two goons and the attention of police Lieutenant Vic Androzzi (Charles Cioffi) before being recruited for a job by Harlem mob boss Bumpy (Moses Gunn), whose daughter Marcy has been kidnapped. Bumpy suspects that rival gang leader Ben Buford (Christopher St. John) may have something to do with the abduction.

Shaft tracks Ben down, triggering an ambush and forcing the two men to work together. Shaft pieces together clues and learns that the Mafia is planning to move in on Bumpy's Harlem turf, and a full-scale gang war is about to erupt with Marcy held as a bargaining chip. With both Androzzi and Bumpy eager for a quick resolution, Shaft and Ben have to find Marcy and avoid open street warfare.

Directed by Gordon Parks and based on the book by Ernest Tidyman, Shaft was one of the earliest action movies with broad appeal to feature a black man as the cool and confident hero. Parks made the decision to cast Richard Roundtree in the lead role (staying true to the novel), and in doing so ignited a new subgenre and pushed the movies forward into a new era.

More influential than good, the film itself is a relatively clunky detective story. The small budget, extremely limited acting talent and rudimentary directing and editing skills are often painfully obvious. A good chunk of the 100 minutes is invested in following Shaft around the streets of New York, pounding the sidewalk, crossing this street and then that street, and shaking down contacts and informants. It's all set to the Isaac Hayes' funk-rich soundtrack, perhaps more famous and authoritative than the film itself.

As for the plot, it's standard fare gang tensions and bamboozled cops building up to a tense final 20 minutes in which Shaft and friends attempt a covert and dangerous infiltration and rescue mission. What matters much more than the story is the attitude, and the script (co-written by Tidyman) is laced with black power stereotypes, including Shaft oozing in confidence, capitalizing on his towering stature, dismissing all symbols of authority, and having his way with the ladies on demand.

Mediocre in quality but immense in consequence, Shaft rules the bustling street.

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Movie Review: Earthquake (1974)

A big scale disaster movie, Earthquake has some effective moments of destruction but is an otherwise sloppily constructed and cheese-filled exercise in tolerating aggravating stock characters spouting horrible lines of dialogue.

In Los Angeles, building engineer Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston) is having marital problems with his depressed wife Remy (Ava Gardner). A series of minor tremors create concern at the Mulholland Dam overlooking the city. At the California Seismological Institute a young staffer crunches the numbers and concludes that a major quake will likely strike the city within 48 hours, but his methodology is unproven. Meanwhile Stewart's boss and father-in-law Sam Royce (Lorne Green) promotes Stewart to President of their engineering company, but Stewart is more interested in pursuing young widow Denise Marshall (Geneviève Bujold).

The big quake does hit, effectively destroying Los Angeles. Stewart has to help Sam save employees from their partially destroyed office tower. Remy, Denise and Denise's injured young son Corry are evacuated to the basement of a supposedly quake-proof highrise. Others caught up in the mayhem are wannabe motorcycle daredevil Miles Quade (Richard Roundtree), short-tempered police officer Lou Slade (George Kennedy) and the financially strapped Rosa Amici (Victoria Principal). But just when it appears that the worst is over, there is more shaking to come.

Produced and directed by Mark Robson, Earthquake arrived at the peak of the epic disaster movie cycle of the early 1970s, with The Towering Inferno and Airport '75 released in the same year. Unfortunately gimmickry was already creeping into the genre as productions competed for viewers' attention. Unable to secure any relevant current stars to boost the box office, Earthquake resorted to something called Sensurround, a mammoth sound system designed to literally shake theatre seats with sub-audible "infra bass" sound waves.

Which is just as well, because what is on the screen is pretty awful. Earthquake underwent extensive post-production editing to tighten up the narrative, and the outcome is notably choppy. Other than the few minutes of special effects depicting the earthquake itself, the rest of the movie is two hours of badly-acted television-level drama. Despite a script co-written by Mario Puzo, the dialogue is cringe-worthy, the characters are stiff, and the attempts at drama and conflict border perilously near laughable.

The marital strife between Stewart and Remy plays like a particularly bad daytime soap episode, while Stewart's lusting after Denise is tawdry. Miles Quade disappears entirely from the ending of the movie, after wasting plenty of set-up time with a useless story about his ambition to be the next Evel Knievel. Walter Matthau appears under a pseudonym as an oblivious barfly, while George Kennedy plays a stock angry but good-hearted cop. Victoria Principal wages battle on two fronts: she fights against a frizzy hairdo that occupies half the screen, and fends off a deranged homicidal national guardsman (Marjoe Gortner) who stumbled in from another movie.

The only bits worth watching are the prolonged earthquake strike scenes, and the special effects range from reasonably impressive to amateurish. When an elevator crash ends with cartoon blood drops childishly superimposed on the image of mangled bodies, the splatter is literally on the screen for a genre that had nowhere to go but down.

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