Shaft

There's 3 versions of John Shaft in the new Netflix take on the story but only  one comes out of this new Shaft film with his dignity intact. Richard Roundtree, the original private dick who was once a sex machine to all the chicks. The reason he survives relatively unscathed is purely down to the fact that he only appears in the film for about 10 minutes or so and thus isn't around long enough to get splattered with the shittiness on display. Shaft 2019 is awful.

John Shaft Jr (Jessie T. Usher) has gone into law enforcement like his father and grandfather before him but this time he's on the side of the Man aka the FBI. When an ex-soldier and friend of his dies of a suspicious drug overdose he goes against the rules of his job to investigate the death for himself. When his snooping hits a brick wall he's forced to ask his estranged father John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson) for help. John Shaft knows every inch of Harlem and the criminals within all know his reputation as a private eye who's very willing to break the law to fight crime. Soon enough father and son are tearing apart 110th street and beyond in search of answers.

Shaft 2019 is retrograde trash. It's embarrassing, it's vulgar, it's homophobic, it's view and treatment of women is exceedingly questionable. It's painfully earnest one moment and the next it feels like you're watching something from the makers of Scary Movie. John Shaft is a man very out of touch with time and the film plays this for laughs that die on their arse every single time. Samuel L. Jackson returns to this role 19 years after his first entertaining effort and it seems like he's playing a whole new character here. A broad, nasty, mean bastard who doesn't ring true to the spirit of the original character at all. You'll be sitting here watching him and wondering who the hell his character is supposed to appeal to at all. He's a rather large arsehole which is jarring for an actor who's always been likeable onscreen even when playing bad guys.

With SLJ's name attached to this I had high hopes for it, until the news came through it was going to be a Netflix release. Sometimes Netflix throws out the odd gem but most of the time it's bad news. This time was no surprise. Shaft 2019 plays out like a cheap pilot for a cable tv show. In the middle of the film there's a shootout played out to a very famous song that's so embarrassingly misguided that you'll have to pause the film for an hour or two to recover after it. It's filmsy looking, has a script you could fit on the wrapper of a fruit salad sweet and it's two main characters are melts. Shaft Jr is the weediest "hero" I've seen in a film in a long time. He's meant to be a new modern take on the character but he just comes off so badly that the film's only pleasing moments are when it treats him like the joke he is. Capoeira?? Go away. The original 1971 Shaft film ends up looking like a masterpiece compared to this and the late appearance of that film's lead, Richard Roundtree only helps to make this film look even worse. The man still has presence to burn and Usher suffers very very badly in comparison.

The 2001 film wasn't the best either but it had a secret weapon in the form of a bad guy called Peoples Hernandez who was played with gusto by Jeffrey Wright. He was a magnificent baddie, the kind you'd happily watch an entire film about. Shaft 2019 has no-one like him, nothing to anchor the film or give it a bit of oomph or a taste of danger. I watched this film only a couple of days ago and the big bad's (Isaach de Bankolé) name and plan of action is gone from my head already. He was totally unmemorable and not helped by the fact that he doesn't turn up until so late in proceedings that he could never have made an impact. It's just another awful thing about an awful film. You get the feeling the money men behind this decided to cash in on Jackson's popularity from his Marvel films without giving a second thought to anything else. Script? Who gives a fuck. Action and excitement? Sure who needs that when we have Nick Fury in a red velvet trenchcoat and a shotgun.

The latest installment in the Shaft franchise is dreadful. Don't waste your time. Don't even play it in the background.