Coming 19 years after Samuel L Jackson's big-screen Shaft, and almost five decades after Richard Roundtree's original portrayal, this sequel's attempt to modernise fails epically. Following John Shaft Jr, a nerdy-cool FBI data analyst with huge Daddy abandonment issues, this outing neither excites on a primal level nor subverts in an amusing way. Jessie T Usher is mediocre as the new-age iteration of the titular badass; he shares decent chemistry with Alexandra Shipp as long-time besties with feelings, but he lacks the requisite charisma. Jackson returns as Papa Shaft, still violating human rights, showing women half his age a good time and walking out in front of traffic, but his swagger can't disguise that he's actually too old for this sh...aft business. The action is dreary, the violence is mean-spirited and the sporadic moments of flashy filmmaking - slow-mo bullet streams, etc - feel desperate and very early 2000s. Morally, tonally and narratively all over the place, Shaft is neither style nor substance. A hard pass.
Review of Shaft
