bijinius — 10 years ago(December 07, 2015 08:37 AM)

okay, so the lights go down, the Paramount Logo starts up, and those instantly-recognizable, iconic Hats start in. We are READY FOR LIFTOFF. and THEN! the credits start, with the Theme from "Shaft" (1971) playing. Not a remix, no new voice-overit's just the Theme from "Shaft". what could have been daring and new is, naturallythe same o-o-old schtick.
Go get 'em, boys! THAT'S how you re-make a classic!!
And, just so we're cleara black man dropping what looks to all the world like a Klu Klux Klan Hood on a big, cartoonish racist? that's no wittyclever rejoinder to lay on someone guilty of racial prejudicethat'simmature and low ("low" here meaning "unrefinedstupid.") - USE YOUR WORDS, Mr. Pheifer (sp?) - i mean, who WROTE this nonsense?? ALSO, i'd be totally bereft of my duties as a "Troll" or whatever fans of any particular film angrily call people whose opinion clashes with theirs if i didn't draw at least
SOME
attention to a particularly hilarious couple of minutes.
upon hearing The crooked/prejudiced/e-e-evil!! Judge's ruling, allowing Christian Bale's character to pledge bail in the amount of a MILLION dollars(!), John Shaft, looking first to the film's obligatory "poor, old mother of the deceased who, upon hearing the verdict, invariably begins wailing inconsolably at the naked INJUSTICE of it all"
THEN
to the obligatory "Villainous, smug bastard as obviously guilty as possible, invariably wearing a s**t-eating grin upon hearing the pre-ordained verdict arranged by his impossibly rich and powerful father" phew, that one's a mouthful.
SO filled with righteous anger, Shaft
throws his
Ninja Super Death Shuriken
/Nickel-plated, two ounce Police Badgeright, SPINNING across the courtroom, where it hits the wall not a FOOT from the Evil Judge's headand INSTEAD of emitting a funny 'ping' noise and clanging unto the groundit
embeds itself right into the heavy, wooden wall
a lot like, wella
Ninja Super Death Shuriken.
THEN (and here's the best part), the film cuts to the exterior of the Courthouse, where (i guess?) the now unemployed Shaft, instead of being arrested by his own former police co-workers for magically making that super light nickel + silver alloy-wrought badge of his perform like a ####ing Ninja DEATH implement and THROWING IT AT A JUDGE(!), he walks away from the Courthouse with three of his pals, all in a huff, even going on to say that "he's out" and "done"(and here's the AWESOME part!) in the resulting chorus of reprisals, the token middle-aged White Guy in his entourage counters his defeatism by offering "ah - come
ON
, John! this is
WACK!
"
and you can actually hear, if you listen closely enough, the (probablyDON'T know/DON'T
really
care) one white guy who took part in the writing of this awful script thinking to himself, all back in 1999/2000 like, "yeahYEAH. i REALLY understand black culture. i meanHERE COMES OSCARBRO.)
P.S. the fact that Christian Bale's character is killed via gunshot in the rabble of a Big Movie Courtroom Thing is pretty great, knowing his part in a very similar series of events in the interminable "Batman Begins"