I watched the movie Shaft initially i think last year and i watched it recently again because why not, it has Samuel L Jackson in it, thats all i need to know its going to be a good movie and watched the latest one made in 2019 before i got to know that their were two instalments prior to this one.
The original Shaft from 1971 introduced John Shaft, as a private detective working in Harlem who gets caught up in a dangerous conflict after being hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a crime boss. Then came the 2000 Shaft, with Samuel L. Jackson taking over the character. This one felt much more like the kind of action movie I was familiar with and then we get to the 2019 movie.
The funny thing is that Shaft isn't really about one Shaft anymore, It's about three generations of them. The film is about John Shaft Jr, played by Jessie T. Usher (you will recognise him from paying A-train in the show ‘the boys’) an FBI cybersecurity analyst who turns to his father, John Shaft II, played for help after his best friend dies under suspicious circumstances and then, because apparently one Shaft wasn't enough, Richard Roundtree returns as the original John Shaft. Netflix describes the film as a story about the younger Shaft seeking help from the father he barely knows, only to discover that he's very different from him and I actually loved that idea, because it made the movie much more funny.
John Jr. grew up very differently from his father. He's educated, analytical and much more cautious. His father, on the other hand, is basically everything Jr. isn't. He's old school, confident, reckless and has absolutely no problem getting himself into trouble. The funniest part is watching these two constantly clash. John Jr, wants to investigate things properly. His father wants to walk into the situation and start asking questions in a much less diplomatic way. 😂 You can almost see Jr. thinking, Why did I come to this man for help? But then at the same time, you can tell that Jr. desperately wants a relationship with his father. That's what gives the movie more emotional weight
I also really liked how the movie uses the three generations together. Seeing Richard Roundtree come back as the original Shaft was probably my favourite part of the whole thing. There's something special about watching the actor who originally created the character sharing the screen with the later versions of Shaft. It almost feels like the franchise looking at its own history and the movie knows exactly what it is, It's an action-comedy with a family story sitting underneath it. There are fights, investigations, arguments, jokes and plenty of moments where Samuel L. Jackson is basically being Samuel L. Jackson.
The chemistry between Samuel L. Jackson and Jessie T. Usher is probably the strongest part for me. Their personalities are so different that putting them together automatically creates funny situations. Jr. is constantly trying to operate within the rules while his father basically treats rules as suggestions.
The story itself is also fairly predictable. You can figure out where certain things are going long before the characters get there but I wasn't watching Shaft expecting some mind bending mystery. I was watching it because I wanted to see Samuel l Jackson to be honest and in that regard, the movie delivers.
The first Shaft feels like a product of the 1970s. The second one takes the character into the early 2000s. Then the 2019 movie brings everything together and basically says, Okay, what happens when all these versions of Shaft exist in the same family,? and somehow, it works. After watching the original Richard Roundtree version, later on and the 2000 Samuel L. Jackson version and finally the 2019 movie again, I actually felt like I had watched three different generations of the same character. Almost fifty years of history and somehow they made it all fit together
Images gotten from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4463894/mediaindex/?ref_=mv?ref_=mv_sm
Rating: 80/100
Originally posted through scrobble.life/movies.