Shaft: Still the man!

Shaft (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, sexual content, drug content, brief nudity and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes you can go home again.

That's my boy! After a long day of sleuthing — with a violent encounter or two along the
way — John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson, left) proudly drags his son, John Jr.
(Jessie T. Usher) to one of his favorite, babe-laden watering holes.

The humor is more frequent and deliberate than was the case back in 1971, and this new action thriller is unquestionably set in our modern world. And yet director Tim Story, along with scripters Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow, frequently evoke the feisty spirit and atmosphere of the half-century-gone blaxploitation era.

They also honor this film’s predecessors, with sly dialogue references, acknowledgments of past events, and — most crucially — generous nods to Isaac Hayes’ jazz influence. And not just the iconic main theme, but also several familiar underscore cues.

To be sure, this updated Shaft — as a character — owes more to Samuel L. Jackson’s 2000 revival, than to Richard Roundtree’s initial portrayal. The best one-liners are tailored to Jackson’s smug, sly delivery, and most of the plot gets its momentum from his ultra-cool presence. 

But Jessie T. Usher’s third-generation John Shaft Jr. definitely pulls his weight; he has been granted a personality engaging enough to carry a future series on his own shoulders, should fate (and box-office returns) move in that direction.

He’s introduced as an infant, during a flashback prologue which depicts the near-fatal ambush that proves one violent event too many for the baby’s mother, Maya (Regina Hall). Frightened beyond endurance, but still clearly in love with Shaft II (Jackson), she nonetheless begs him to leave them, and keep his distance. Which he does, reluctantly, his presence a reminder to John Jr. solely via a series of hilariously inappropriate birthday presents, as the years pass.

Along the way, Maya does everything in her power to groom her son into a sensitive, clean-cut, well-mannered and responsible young man: as unlike his father as possible.

Flash-forward to the present day, where John Jr. is the proud recipient of an MIT diploma, and is newly ensconced as a rookie FBI data analyst in an office overseen by short-tempered Special Agent Vietti (Titus Welliver, utterly wasted in an underwritten, one-dimensional role). John Jr. has retained two best buds since childhood: Karim (Avan Jogia), who always had his back; and Sasha (Alexandra Shipp), now a doctor at a New York City hospital.

Promised Land: Rock-solid advocacy cinema

Promised Land (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.9.13


Matt Damon hasn’t written many scripts since 1997’s Good Will Hunting, his Academy Award-winning debut effort with Ben Affleck. His prudence is understandable; where does one go, from up?

Hoping to undo the doubts raised by a local farmer who warns that fracking is anything
but a safe means of obtaining "clean" natural gas, Steve Butler (Matt Damon) takes
the microphone during a McKinley town meeting. Unfortunately, his usual smooth
patter will fail him a bit here, leading to a divided community ... and displeasure on the
part of Steve's corporate bosses.

Good Will Hunting was directed by Gus Van Sant; no surprise, then, that they collaborated on Damon’s next script, 2002’s little-seen (with good cause) Gerry.

Perhaps chastened by that experience, Damon put his word processor in the closet for a decade, while crafting an impressive acting career as both action hero — the Bourne series — and overall international film star.

But writers never quit; telling stories is in their blood. No doubt Damon was waiting for just the right property, and he certainly got it with Promised Land. Once again under Van Sant’s capable guidance, this captivating drama gets its juice from well-crafted characters, tart dialogue, a solid ensemble cast and a hot-button scenario ripped from real-world headlines.

Damon shares scripting duties with John Krasinski, a rising film star making good on the promise he has shown for so many years, on television’s The Office. Krasinski isn’t known as a writer — unless once includes 2009’s best-forgotten Brief Interviews with Hideous Men — but he certainly rises to the occasion here. He and Damon have deftly adapted a story by Dave Eggers, who burst on the scene a few years ago, with scripts for Away We Go and Where the Wild Things Are.

Good screenplays get their power from many elements. It’s not enough to craft piquant one-liners; they must be true to a well constructed plot. (They also must be delivered well by actors who understand how to maximize the impact of crisply timed dialogue, and that’s where we credit Van Sant.) The characters themselves must be interesting, efficiently sketched and cleverly integrated with all the other players on stage. We must care about them, either as good guys or bad guys.

Most of all, they must change — mature, regress, whatever — as a result of what happens to them.

A tall order all around.

Factor in a desire to be relevant — to indict a topic of the day — and most writers fail to juggle all those fragile eggs.

Damon and Krasinski, in welcome contrast, never err. Even casual exchanges of dialogue have consequences; watch for the payoff on a passing reference to a little girl selling lemonade outside a high school gymnasium. Goodness, it could be argued that she carries the moral weight of the entire film. That is sharp scripting.