Shaft

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Year:	2000
Country of origin:	USA / Germany
Director:	John Singleton
Genre:	Blaxploitation remake
Starring:	Samuel L. Jackson, Vanessa Williams, Christian Bale, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Bale
Rating:	2/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162650/
Tagline:	Still the man, any questions?
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

Reimagining (hate that phrase) of a legendary Blaxploitation movie from the early seventies - which I am yet to see, incidentally - this sees Samuel L. Jackson donning the natty dress and trademark designer sideburns and taking to the streets of NYC.

We are introduced to John Shaft as he is being run out of his department by his Department Chief for rather unwisely punching the lights out of Christian Bale's Walter Wade, a despicable racist who taunts black people for sport and even murders on occasion. Due to the assault by Shaft, Wade is handed a lighter bail sentence than otherwise would have been the case, and Shaft determines to put right that wrong, heading into The 'Hood, with (not so) hilarious consequences.

And therein lies the major flaw here.
The movie attempts to straddle the line between gritty, violent cop thriller and wise ass 'street' movie, and manages to be neither. Instead, we have a half-soaked line in cop shenanigans that you simply cannot buy into because everything is just too lightweight, and some truly irritating 'wacky' characters playing it all for laughs.
Though it showed intial promise - the first fifteen minutes is fairly engaging - this fell apart and simply became headache inducing and annoying.
Or perhaps I'm just getting old.
Couldn't get my cortex around it, even though I desperately wanted to enjoy it as I do like Samuel L. Jackson.
Not one I will be firing up again in a hurry.