Shaft

John Singleton's update of the 1970s blaxploitation classic does well to maintain the music, the man, and the mystique. The 1971 Shaft wasn't long on plot, but it rose in pop stature on the wings of Isaac Hayes's smooth, catchy theme song and Richard Roundtree's bad-ass cat. Gone are the Afro, the sideburns, and free love; in their place we get the shaved head, the goatee, and a moral sense of justice.

As the Y2K Shaft, Samuel Jackson is a cop trying to solve a racially motivated murder. The guilty party (Christian Bale, making his American Psycho character look timid) is a rich socialite with a nasty attitude and a knack for evading justice. Caught in the middle is a reluctant eyewitness (a wasted Toni Collette) whom Shaft must find and protect. Add to the mix a colorfully psychotic Dominican drug dealer (a devilishly over-the-top Jeffrey Wright), some crooked cops, and a handful of extraneous street caricatures and you've got a thriller that threatens to become more convoluted than thrilling. Shaft begins as a wonderfully hip homage, but by the time the frivolous big shoot-'em-up ending arrives, the film's snappy, irreverent wit is but a memory.

-- Tom Meek