A 21st-century Superfly: Can you dig it?
Superfly
(out of 4) Starring Trevor Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Michael Kenneth Williams, Lex Scott Davis, Jennifer Morrison, Andrea Londo and Jacob Ming-Trent. Directed by Director X. Opens Wednesday. 116 minutes. 18A Dig, if you will, the pictures:
Gordon Parks Jr.’s 1972 blaxploitation classic Super Fly opens with furious cocaine kingpin Youngblood Priest (Ron O’Neal) running down and booting around a junkie who stole his cash. Director X’s 2018 update mences Superfly com
with a considerably calmer Priest, now played by Trevor Jackson (TV’s Grown-ish), as he gives the stink eye and a lecture to a rapper who owes him money. The difference is drastic, as is the locale change from Harlem to Atlanta and a soundtrack that shifts from Curtis Mayfield’s funk/soul original to Future’s R&B/hip-hop fresh take with friends that include Miguel, Lil Wayne, Khalid, 21 Savage, Young Thug and Mississauga’s PartyNextDoor.
All of which is more than OK, for anyone who is OK with a “reimagining” of an old film rather than one that has been copied word for word and note for note — and what’s the point of that?
Brampton’s own Director X ( Across the Line) nods to the original movie but also smartly insists on finding more within its violently pursued “American Dream” narrative.
He preserves many of the original characters and the proverbial “one last score” planned by protagonist Priest before the coke boss moves from the mean streets to Easy Street. X adds new characters and locations and flashier visuals, something you’d expect from the mind and eye behind hot music videos for the chart-topping likes of Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, Jay-Z and more.
Jackson’s Priest is a much more of a dandy and satyr than his 1970s namesake. With his sculpted hair, regal attire and regular bedroom/shower stall threesomes — Lex Scott Davis and Andrea Londo play his down-with-it girlfriends, Georgia and Cynthia — he’s the way I would have imagined Prince in a blaxploitation remake. Priest knows how to use a gun but prefers not to, and he’d rather trade in clean digital cryptocurrency than filthy lucre.
Priest’s right-hand man Eddie ( Mudbound’s Jason Mitchell) and muscle Fat Freddie (Jacob Ming-Trent) are two other character callbacks, as is his drug-dealing mentor Scatter (Michael Kenneth Williams), who now runs a martial-arts studio rather than a restaurant. Comparisons end as new characters and situations in the busy script by Alex Tse ( Watchmen) add menace and tension: Rival drug gang Snow Patrol has a trigger-happy stooge in Juju (Kaalan Walker), who is jealous of Priest; the Atlanta cops have Detective Mason (Jennifer Morrison), who makes corruption seem like a sneering badge of honour; and Mexican drug lord Adalberto Gonzalez (Esai Morales) bru- tally reminds everybody of where those bricks of coke come from and who needs to be respected — and paid.
But drugs are less of an emphasis in this Superfly, which finds more shock value — and social urgency — in the racially motivated police violence against Priest and his crew. The cold-blooded shooting of a Black man by a white cop erases any lingering sense of blaxploitation nostalgia.