'Shaft' is still great, but the audience is much improved

By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 16, 2000

[Photo: Paramount Pictures] Richard Roundtree, left, is the original Shaft, and Samuel L. Jackson plays his nephew, the hero’s latest manifestation, in the new film.

Watching John Singleton's update of Shaft made me flash back to the first time I saw the original African-American action hero at work. Everything looks a bit better now, on the screen, in the audience and outside the theater.

Tampa Theatre, 1971. My father and I were the only white people in the audience, and we were there mainly to kill time. Being a minority, even temporarily, was an eye-opening reversal for a child raised in the Deep South who once shook George Wallace's hand.

That matinee marked the first time I ever saw an audience completely engaged in a movie. Not just reacting to it, but living through it. Every move Shaft made seemed to be exactly what the audience wanted in real life: doing the right thing, stumping The Man and, most important, "staying black."

I could certainly enjoy the movie, but not the way a black person did. Heroes who looked like me were a dime a dozen.

Twenty-nine years later, nobody blinks at an African-American movie star saving the day. A viewer goes to Shaft wondering what years of generally improving race relations have done to his vibe.

Don't worry, it's all good. Singleton gets it right, from casting Samuel L. Jackson in the Shaft persona to developing a tag-team of villains who deserve their butt-whippings. The new Shaft is a bad mutha . . . well, I'll shut my mouth there, but you get the idea.

Everything hinges on Jackson, and he responds with a demeanor comparable to jagged glass wrapped in Armani silk. The new John Shaft is the nephew of Richard Roundtree's 1971 character. The only difference in attitude is sartorial -- Jackson doesn't wear turtlenecks.

The birth of blaxploitation Former NAACP leader Junius Griffin coined the term “blaxploitation” in 1972, complaining in Variety about negative images in a then-new film called Superfly, a title that also became a catch phrase. Dig these classics Check your local video stores and cable TV channels for these blaxploitation classics. Bad muthas who mattered Blaxploitation movies were merely beginnings for some artists and entire careers for others. Just for fun, here's a list of the genre's most celebrated soul brothers and sisters. We've added a Funk-o-meter rating ranging from 1 (might as well be Bill Cosby) to 10 (baddest of the bad)

Jackson plays it as severe as his sculpted beard, a reminder that MGM didn't like Roundtree's mustache because the bosses thought it made him intimidating. Jackson knows every variation of glaring, with impeccable instinct about when to use them. He doesn't just talk tough, he adds mockery and superiority that would have caused gasps a generation ago. Now we just laugh and shake our heads in admiration.

The modern Shaft is a New York detective, but any conformity to authority implied by that doesn't last long. The script briskly depicts his disillusionment with the job, especially when rich frat boy Walter Williams (Christian Bale) is acquitted of a hate-crime murder. The only eyewitness (Toni Collette) has disappeared. Shaft quits the force to find her and take him down.

Most filmmakers would settle for the presold title and that simple plot. Not Singleton. Into the picture struts Peoples Martinez (Jeffrey Wright), a Latino cocaine dealer with a deadly grudge against Shaft. Wright almost steals the movie from Jackson with his depiction of a mumbling ball of hate and streetwise sarcasm sporting dagger-shaped sideburns. Walter and Peoples keep one eye on Shaft and another on each other.

Singleton tosses in a couple of crooked cops, another who needs sensitivity training and Vanessa L. Williams, dressed down for her policewoman part. Collette doesn't have much to do except worry. Rap star Busta Rhymes adds comic relief, matching Drew Bundini Brown's dopey turn in the original. The first Shaft director, Gordon Parks Sr., has a cameo as a ritzy nightclub patron, a step up from the Harlem dive where he was bartender in the original.

Two of Singleton's tributes to the 1971 film are downright electrifying. First, I dare anyone to hear Isaac Hayes' percolating theme song and not move some part of his or her body. Then try to avoid smiling when the agelessly magnetic Roundtree shows up with a woman on each arm. Scenes he shares with Jackson create more tingles than Pacino facing Di Niro in Heat and Kirk meeting Picard. Combined.

Best of all, the new Shaft can't be considered simply a "black movie," as so many were willing to dismiss Parks' film. This is thrilling cinematic escapism, raised a few notches by nostalgia. A celebration of black cinema, not an experiment anymore. Can you dig it? In 1971, Parks probably wouldn't have guessed that you could.

Shaft

• GRADE: A-
• DIRECTOR: John Singleton
• CAST: Samuel L. Jackson, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Bale, Vanessa L. Williams, Richard Roundtree, Busta Rhymes, Toni Collette
• SCREENPLAY: Richard Price, John Singleton, Shane Salerno
• RATING: R; violence, profanity, sexual situations
• RUNNING TIME: 97 min.