Shaft (2019)

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Shaft (2019) – 3 out of 5

It’s been 19 years since Samuel L. Jackson starred as Shaft.  I really enjoyed that film but I never really expected to see a sequel ever take place.  Well, here we are in 2019 and Sam Jackson is ready to be that bad mother…I should shut my mouth.  From a tone perspective, this one is very different but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is bad.  That being said, it does have its fair-share of shortcomings that were a bit cringe-y.

I've been a Sam Jackson fan for so long that I literally need no convincing to
see a movie he is in.

In 1989, after a hit on John Shaft’s life is thwarted, Maya Babanikos (Regina Hall), Shaft’s wife, decides that this life was too dangerous for her and their son so she leaves John (Jackson).  Over two decades later, JJ (Jessie T. Usher) is an adult and working for the FBI.  However, after his friend is found dead from a supposed overdose, JJ becomes suspicious.  Unable to investigate the situation on his own, he turns to his estranged father for help.  Reluctantly, Shaft agrees and sees it as an opportunity to teach his son all the things he never got a chance to before.

It's Shaft's duty...to pass diaper changing onto his wife because he holds
to outdated gender roles.

The antagonist was pretty intimidating in this movie...
too bad we only see him at the end and the rest of
the film is mostly talking about him and barely
showing him.

Shaft is one of those films that when it is working it is a lot of fun and super entertaining.  The movie leans more on the action/comedy side for this sequel and this shift in tone from the previous film works, for the most part, fairly effectively.  The cast is clearly having a great time—Sam Jackson looks like he is having an absolute ball—and the story does a great job of balancing the action with the comedy and never letting the comedy overtake the more serious aspects of the story.  This might have scored higher on my rating scale but there were some aspects to the story and humor that just didn’t work for me and were groan-inducing at best and cringe-worthy at worst.

Some guys look great in turtlenecks but when I wear one I look like Uncle Fester
in the Addams Family sequel.

Due to the era in which the character was created there is a lot of misogyny surrounding the character of John Shaft.  This new film doesn’t shy away from that aspect and while this may please the fanbase there is no denying that this aspect is a touch strange and out-of-place in 2019.  This misogyny is seen in the form of scenes where Shaft defends outdated gender roles and talks about how “men nowadays” are all soft.  This leads right into my next drawback and that is the gross Boomer arguments this film regurgitates.  This movie is constantly talking about how awful Millennials are and how great older folks are.  These parts are when the movie stops being fun and feels like you are just watching a Boomer rant you’d see on Fox News that has taken the form of a Shaft fanfic.  Thankfully, these moments aren't overwhelmingly prevalent and John Shaft II does grow a little as the story progresses and see that, at least partially, his old way of thinking is a tad reductive—sadly, this aspect isn’t developed very well and is just kinda farted out in the third act.

There's something inherently not cool about the character of Shaft ranting
about "kids nowadays."

The one drawback that was really hard to overlook was a running homophobic joke.  Due to the chauvinistic nature of the character, there’s a lot of overcorrecting to show what a manly man that Shaft is.  This takes the form of his womanizing and misogyny but it also comes in the form of a really strange homophobic joke that keeps getting referenced during the first and second act.  Basically, there is an organization in the film called “Brothers Helping Brothers” and whenever this is brought up there is a joke that it sounds like a club for gay men.  This joke is incredibly forced (seriously, "helping" is considered a gay thing? You're not really secure in your heterosexuality if helping another man threatens you sexually) and feels like a fossil from the gay panic era.  The gag is never funny and, when you factor in how little gay black men are represented in the world of entertainment, it feels like a step backwards.

For all its problems and weak gay joke, this is still a damn cool shot.

When Shaft is a male Boomer fantasy that complains about how kids are weak and when they were growing up “men were men” (there’s even a scene where JJ’s love interest finally falls for him after he kills some hired guns—because nothing turns women on like gun violence!) the film is incredibly weak and feels like a product from a bygone era.  However, there are plenty of times when the film is genuinely fun.  It is enjoyable watching Shaft and son investigate and grow together and it is really fun when Richard Roundtree shows up and it because a family affair.  Hell, there is even some great action in this one.  Basically, the whole film is back-and-forth because as much as it gets right and is working there are portions that are just eye-rollingly bad and hard to digest.