With the recent renaissance of '70s kitsch, it
was bound to happen sooner or later.
The bad news is that "Shaft" 2000 will not go down in history as the dubious cultural icon that "Shaft" 1971 became. That's also the good news. We won't keep renting it 30 years from now and view it with reverence (or mirth, as the case may be). It's just a better than average detective movie that'll help us enjoy the summer of 2000 a little bit more.
A few things impressed me. For starters, the acting was much better than I was expecting. Samuel L. Jackson was kind of a no-brainer choice for the lead. He brings a little bit of everything into the picture: muscle, brains, grit, class, toughness, compassion, and, of course... STYLE. I'm glad they gave the highly talented support cast just a bit of quality screen time. "Shaft" is a much better movie for it. Tony award-winning stage veteran Jeffrey Wright is excellent as "Peoples" Hernandez, a Dominican gang leader, and British actor Christian Bale is effective as Walter Wade, an arrogant monster of a spoiled rich kid you'll love to hate.
The plot holds together better than many movies of this type. There's plenty of SOD (Suspension Of Disbelief) to be sure, but they mercifully kept those annoying & confusing arbitrary last-minute contrived plot twists to a relative minimum. Of course, the standards for this genre are so low, that any half-recognizable storyline will earn some points.
My one serious complaint would be that there's a couple of violent scenes that really don't need to be there. They don't further the plot or provide any excitement; their only real purpose seems to be to neutralize us to onscreen gore and prepare us for the next Colombine massacre. I suppose this film is hardly the only one we could indict for that.
While the original "Shaft" broke new ground featuring a black lead hero, this is no longer a great novelty. Chalk it up to progress that the height of black pride in cinema need no longer be an incredibly tacky detective flick. While Shaft 2000 is indeed very black, and the plot hinges around a gruesome racially motivated killing, the producers seem to want to play down the whole race issue from that point on. Black and white faces are more or less equally represented among the good guys, the bad guys and the victims.
The theme song is 100% guilty pleasure. When they start with the groovy high-hat and the scratchy wah wah guitar, then kick in with the horns and the strings, I have to say that my tail is really wiggling. Decent acting, decent plot, lots of action with the occasional "leopard skin" backdrop? I can "dig" it. When they try to revive those ugly polyester shirts with the huge collars, I might have to draw the line, though...