Can you dig a comedic Shaft in 2019? We can
When original Shaft cat Richard Roundtree strutted New York’s chilly streets in 1971, to the strains of Isaac Hayes’ funktastic title theme, you can be damned sure nobody was thinking of the film’s future potential as a multi-generational action comedy.
Ditto for when Samuel L. Jackson rebooted the role in 2000, adding new layers of cool menace to the Black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks.
But if superheroes like Thor, Deadpool and the Guardians of the Galaxy can lighten up, then maybe Shaft can, too. So we can dig what Barber
shop’s Tim Story is up to with his 2019 version of Shaft, if only for the excellent chemistry between Roundtree, Jackson and new hire Jessie T. Usher as the grandpa, dad and son versions of John Shaft — plus Regina Hall as the former daughter-inlaw, ex-wife and concerned mom who will assuredly not remain silent.
The screenplay by Kenya Barris ( Girls Trip, TV’s Black-ish) and Alex Barnow (TV’s Family Guy) isn’t much, but then Shaft has always been about attitude, not platitudes.
A 1989 opener sets the scene: John Shaft (Jackson) and his soon-to-be-former spouse Maya (Hall) are arguing in a car parked on a Harlem street about his unreliable ways as a husband and his bad example as a father to JJ, their newborn son.
Shaft is trying to listen, but he’s also aware that some threatening badasses in a nearby sedan are in need of ventilation to cool them off.
He gets the job done, blamblam-blam, but that’s enough for Maya. A fast-forwarded montage later — plus a soundtrack shift from Hayes-influenced R&B to modern hip-hop — John Sr. is divorced and barely repentant while mom and a now grown-up JJ are busy getting on with their lives. Daddy Shaft is now just a memory who sends inappropriate birthday presents.
JJ, an MIT grad doing cyber security for the FBI, couldn’t be more unlike his pa, a former NYPD cop turned private eye, even though he’s similarly involved in law enforcement.
He hates guns (“I’m not a gun guy”), eschews cursing (“Please don’t use the N-word”) and far from being a sex machine, he can barely speak to Shasha (Alexandra Shipp), the nurse and childhood friend he’s sweet on without getting all tongue-tied.
JJ’s no coward, though. When the mob-ruled heroin trade plaguing Harlem leads to personal grief, he sets out to get answers and arrests.
But this 21st-century investigator soon realizes that he’ll need the old-school skills of his father, who realizes he could use a hand from JJ’s grandfather.
Still think Shaft-times-three couldn’t work?
I quote Jackson to Usher: “You think too much.” Right on!