The new “Shaft” is an upgrade that’s also a downgrade. It’s not a “blaxploitation” movie, whatever that would now look like (at this point, the concept is almost meaningless…
), down-and-out private dick , and the son he abandoned 30 years ago, JJ Shaft , who shares nothing with his dad but his name.
Not that it’s a fair fight. JJ, in his role as desk-jockey hacker, is presented as a savvy but overly officious law enforcer who is so responsible that he’s fundamentally emasculated. Yet Jessie T. Usher is a fast appealing actor, and he doesn’t play JJ as a geek stereotype. He’s more like a latter-day Young MC — a dude who’s got the gift of gab but is totally comfortable with his conventional middle-class soul. The movie’s message, of course, is that he needs a little Shaft in his life.
“Shaft” was co-written by Kenya Barris and the TV scribe Alex Barnow , and it’s got one of those plots that’s an interlocking series of only-in-the-movies situational abstractions. JJ’s buddy, Karim , a war veteran and recovering junkie, is found dead of a massive overdose. JJ spends the movie trying to find out what happened to him, an investigation that leads him to drug dens, a mosque that may be a terrorist front, and a support group for veterans that Karim founded.
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