Shaft: Critic Reviews

It's hard to remember so unapologetically flamboyant a movie.

Shaft pushes our buttons which means it's something that has been next to unheard-of this year: reasonably rousing screen entertainment.

It's fun and a good deal better than the fondly remembered original.

The story becomes a mess about halfway through.

Is this a good movie? Not exactly; too much of it is on automatic pilot, as it must be, to satisfy the fans of the original Shaft.

This new Shaft has the stuff to grab its audience in a big way, maybe even opening up a new franchise.

Sleek, urgent, knowing, gleefully profane and above all ultra-cool, Shaft blows into the summer movie season like a breath of fresh air.

John Singleton may have been the youngest director ever to be nominated for an Academy Award, but I wouldn't exactly call him a natural-born filmmaker.

[Covers] too many bases.

Its sheer balls-out bravado is often brutally funny.

The current version tries awfully hard but with little success to create a Shaft for this day and age.

A guilty pleasure for adults and older teens.

Shaft quickly splits into two different movies, and only one of them fully succeeds.

The primary focus of the film, and the real reason we're here, is to watch Samuel Jackson sink his teeth into the Shaft's trash-talking dialogue.

Samuel L. Jackson, who broke out of the pack in Pulp Fiction, fits the role and his leather Armani coat as though it's tailor-made. He's the man, and we can dig it.

Despite a fairly intriguing first hour that captures the original film's leisurely pace and street-smart mood, what finally conks Shaft's afro is a third act that lacks a compelling, forward-moving plot.

Jackson strives mightily to unify the story, but the job is too much for him. Once again a studio action movie went before the camera before the script was ready.

a surprisingly successful update of what many regard as the best of the "blaxploitation" films of the early 1970s. It owes most of its success to Jackson, who hasn't had such a meaty role since "Pulp Fiction"...

Se nao revoluciona o genero com suas batidas cenas de acao, Shaft consegue, ao menos, resgatar um personagem interessante.

Even with a pro like Samuel L. Jackson in the title role, it has a hard time keeping the balls in the air.

A messy, slapdash remake of Gordon Parks' overheated and overrated 1971 blaxploitation cash-in.

[Jackson] misses the essence of the character.

To have to sit through even a few minutes of this surprisingly lame thriller just to hear the song is much too steep a price to pay.

Singleton has choreographed clever, viscerally exciting gunfights and chases, and even provides heavily stylized wipes and cuts as visual transitions between scenes.

Enjoyable on the level of cartoon silliness.