Shaft

Written by: Richard Price and John Singleton & Shane Salerno Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Vanessa Williams, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Bale, Busta Rhymes, Dan Hedaya

An hour and thirty-eight minutes never went by so slowly. The idea seemed like a good one: remake the 1971 Richard Roundtree classic, but with a modern hero who is even tougher than the original Shaft. Throw in some hip hop styling, some new millennium humor, and add the benefit of state-of-the-art stunt work. Even the preview had heat; you could tell that the audience wanted to see the picture, wanted it to be great, wanted to get into it. (By now we should know that previews rarely tell the tale.) It’s a shame that this fine plan fell so utterly, insipidly, on its face. The script is credited to the extremely talented Richard Price, and it must be the worst thing he has ever written. He takes what should have been a bulletproof concept and somehow manages to obliterate it with a story so banal, so lacking in originality--so boring --that it is almost unbearable. Had the script met even the bare minimum standards for a cop shoot-em-up, the picture might have at least survived as a “guilty pleasure.” As it is, it is just guilty.

The so-called story begins with a racially motivated killing of an African American man by Walter Wade, Jr. (Christian Bale, who was terrific in “American Psycho,” but doesn’t have much to do here except act racist and mean), a smug, rich white guy. Because Walter is smug and rich, the case annoys our hero John Shaft, who can’t forget it, even four years later, when Walter returns from hiding out in Switzerland. (What prompts Walter to return to the States is a question repeatedly asked by people in the film, and yet it is never answered.) So Shaft makes it his business to bring him to justice. That’s about it. Shaft’s big challenge is to capture a bail jumper. This story line seems so inconsequential that at first I thought that it was just a prologue to the real story. Alas, no real story ever surfaced. Wade is not even a particularly threatening bail jumper. He is mean, all right, but he is about as much a criminal mastermind as Elmer Fudd.

In fact, he seems to be rather stupid. Well, OK, the viewer thinks, then he must be a formidable foe because of his big shot father and his connections. Um, no. Actually, he seems to lose all his connections, and his money, pretty much right off the bat. He is reduced to stealing jewelry from his stepmother, so what we are left with is a handsome but dull lunkhead roaming the streets, trying to... what? Fence his stolen jewels to get money to buy his way out of a jam? That’s what it looks like, anyway. It is generally acknowledged that a great hero needs a great villain to challenge him and bring out his best. If Walter Wade, Jr. is the best villain Shaft can locate, he’ll be playing in the minor leagues forever.

The filmmakers drag in a few other elements to try to spice up the mix: a missing witness (not that missing, it turns out); a couple of corrupt cops; a manic, self mutilating Latino drug dealer (Jeffrey Wright, one of the few sources of energy, and, more importantly, humor, in the picture); a sexy female cop (Vanessa Williams, who, last time I checked, was a movie star, but is completely wasted here in a tiny role); Lawrence Taylor, in a bizarre cameo, playing, apparently, himself; and, in a small role as Shaft’s uncle, the original Shaft, Richard Roundtree (still impressive, despite his underwritten part). But these additions are pretty transparently window dressing; none of them fit well together, and none of them make the picture any more coherent.

In fact, the picture flies off in so many directions it can be a little hard to figure out who is doing what to whom and why (it is even unclear for much of the film whether Shaft is on or off the police force). Worse, it doesn’t seem worth the effort to try. By the time the inevitable car chase and shootout (during which, naturally, Shaft never misses, and the bad guys never hit anything) roll around, I was half asleep. It is almost as if the filmmakers set out to cull the shlockiest elements of bad cop pictures and splice them together. Having done so, they leave us little to contemplate besides all of the inventive endearments African Americans in the picture use for each other.

In fact, a good portion of the picture seems dedicated to urban Black lingo, which is fine for atmosphere, but not much for story. I am not sure how I would feel about this picture if I were Black; it seems to take a rather confused position on race relations. In one early stationhouse scene, a white cop refers to a black prisoner as “cornbread.” Shaft calls the cop a “Nazi,” but later in the picture, teams up with the same cop to, well, beat up and rob Wade. (Constitution? What Constitution?) Afterwards, Shaft says to the white cop, “Remember, you still my cracker,” to which the white cop replies, “Right, cornbread.” Then they laugh and slap hands. You figure it out. It seems to me that a major studio picture, with an African American director and star, might have been an opportunity for some interesting perspectives on race.

But Singleton, who is normally an effective director, seems averse to anything interesting here. The picture does have one thing in its favor: Samuel L. Jackson, who is a fine choice to be the new John Shaft. Although he strikes me as a bit old for the part (he is about 50), he looks younger and handles the physicality of the role with aplomb. And he has screen presence to burn. He also has a great Ruth Carter-designed wardrobe (which I think has gotten more press attention than the star himself), heavy on the leather coats, turtlenecks, sunglasses and Armani. He looks great. He looks like Shaft should look. And I suppose he acts like Shaft should act, which is to say that he ignores the law at every opportunity, especially if it means he can beat the tar out of some low life scum for no particularly good reason. If Jackson couldn’t muscle himself a better script for this screen icon, I guess that’s not his fault. (6/21/2000)