Shaft film review

certificate_18

SHAFT

Arriving so soon after the reissue of Gordon Parks's 1971 blaxploitation classic, John Singleton's new take on the Shaft legend looks decidedly tame.

The lack of plot and fully developed characters is noticeable, but whenever the film stumbles, Singleton can always fall back on leading man Samuel L Jackson, sporting a cool goatee and a swanky Giorgio Armani's leather trenchcoat like some wannabe R&B star.

John Shaft (Jackson) is one of the New York Police Department's finest: a tough but fair detective who cares passionately about his work and has no stomach for injustice or intolerance.

When waspish college kid Walter Wade (Christian Bale) kills a young black student (Omar Epps) in an unmotivated killing, Shaft arrests the arrogant racist and prepares to put his man behind bars. Unfortunately, Wade skips bail and flees to Switzerland where he will be safe from the long arms of the US justice system.

Two years later, Wade attempts to sneak back into the country but Shaft is waiting at the airport and places him under arrest. Posting bail, Wade heads back out on to the streets, determined to remove the thorn in his side - John Shaft - once and for all.

So he hooks up with another of Shaft's sworn enemies, Dominican drug lord Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright), and sets about exacting his revenge. Meanwhile, the coolcat detective searches for the one witness to Wade's crime, waitress Diane Palmieri (Toni Collette), whose testimony would ensure a life sentence for the cocksure bigot. Providing Wade doesn't get to her first and ensure her silence with a bullet in the head.

Opening and closing to the funky strains of Isaac Hayes's Oscar-winning theme tune, Shaft is a bold and stylish crime thriller which captures some of the look and feel of the original (the costumes and set design are a pleasing melange of present day chic and '70s kitsch). Richard Roundtree even makes a cameo appearance as Jackson's Uncle John, who dishes out useful advice with a couple of foxy chicks on each arm.

Jackson's private eye is one tough cookie, but he's certainly no ladies' man like his uncle. He barely registers interest in the opposite sex, making a nonsense out of the theme song's opening line: "Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?"