Blaxploitation returns, and with it, the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks - I'm taking about Shaft - can you dig it? Ok, so we've heard the theme song countless times and we all know who John Shaft is, but many Gen-Xers have never seen the original Shaft (TV or movies) nor have we seen many of the films that were spawned and termed 'Blaxploitation.'

Both the old and the new Shaft have attitude galore, but unfortunately, this new Shaft fails to deliver as did the old. The new Shaft sees investigator John Shaft who's "too black for the blue and too blue for the black," make the decision to leave the force and pursue a racist murderer (Christian Bale) on his own. Without the rules and regulations of the police department tying him down, he was able to regulate on his own. Unfortunately, the plot becomes too hard to follow with subplots that make absolutely no sense. First we get the introduction of Peoples (Jeffrey Wright) when Shaft arrests him for "assault with a deadly weapon." In jail, he meets up with Walter Wade Jr. (Bale) and a strange friendship develops which never gets its due time on screen. The muddled plots combined with the "new" Shaft makes for a very unimpressive movie-going experience. I had hoped for something better from Samuel L. Jackson, but unfortunately, Shaft is weighed down by the muddled plot and departure from the Shaft of old.

Genres: Action
Rated: R
Runtime: 98 minutes
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