Ron Jacobson Reviews Shaft

John Shaft Jr. (aka JJ, aka Shaft Jr.) is an FBI cybersecurity expert, but to uncover the truth behind his best friend’s untimely death, he needs an education that only one person can provide him with, his dad, that dad which he has not seen in 30-years. You got it, it’s a generational budding movie in an attempt to usher in a next-gen of the franchise, the question is it enough for a reboot?

Now that Junior has found his long lost dad, he has to suffer him berating him about everything from him not being man enough, being too white or too apologetic almost to the point you start to believe the movie has made a point to advocate the caveman mentality to the millennials.

Almost 50 years after the original Shaft and four movies later, the bad-ass image it created in the original flick feels like is almost impossible to recreate, even when casting the original Shaft, 76-years-old Richard Roundtree.

Many who have seen the new flick felt a bit bitter about what it stands for, as it proves a point many have tried to believe is not true anymore, how half of a millennium later it is as if no progress has been made in racial politics and how the African-American community looks at itself.

The 2019 Shaft has missed a golden opportunity to reflect how being a complicated man has actually evolved since it was first explored in the 1971 Shaft. Yet if what you have come to watch is Samuel L. Jackson in full Samuel L. Jackson mode you might actually find some solace in the movie, for me it was mostly just painful. This one gets a Thumbs Down, it really is not worth the price of your ticket.