(Before this review gets underway, I'd like to give out some mad props to my homies, B Dawg and Mastah S.  Word up. )

The big movie this weekend is Shaft, John Singleton's homage to blaxploitation, which stars Samuel L. Jackson as the cop, private dick, and sex machine known as John Shaft.  

In good conscience, I can't say that Shaft is a good movie.   This film has plot holes bigger than Shaft's "LD."   But this movie has Samuel Jackson, and damn, it has attitude.  Either one of these things by itself can carry along a movie, but put ‘em together?  I promise, you will never see anyone kick as much ass as Samuel Jackson when he's playing Shaft.  He struts around in leather, and he outsmarts everyone, and any gun he's shooting is loaded with extra loud bullets.  No matter what stupid development occurs, when he is on the screen, you have to grin and say "aaaawwww yeeeeeah."  Really, you do.  And you forgive the movie almost anything.

Let's talk about the plot, and its holes, for just a moment.  The main story involves the murder of a black youth by a white boy (Christian Bale) after a racial altercation at a bar.  A bartender (Toni Collette) witnesses the murder and starts running.  The cop in charge of the case is John Shaft, who struts on the line between law and lawlessness.  When the killer keeps getting released on bail (thanks to judges who are in Daddy's pocket) Shaft gets frustrated, quits, and  goes outside the law to get his man. 

The two main villains are Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright), a Latino drug lord, and Walter Williams, the Richie Rich white boy murderer.  Peoples is great to watch, and has attitude to spare (he manages to keep the psychological upper hand while he's on the toilet, of all things).   On the other hand, Walter smarms around one dimensionally like a poor man's Tom Cruise.  They loosely (and improbably) form an alliance, and Shaft ends up going after them both. 

The main story problem comes when Walter ventures first into prison, then into the inner city and manages to hold his own.  In prison, he successfully beats up a guy who outweighs him by approximately a factor of ten.  Later in the movie, this well-known, media hyped murderer of a black boy (think O.J. in reverse) goes into black neighborhoods wearing a dorky baseball cap and khakis and nobody shoots him on sight.  Yeah, right.  Where did this wuss learn how to survive on the streets?  In finishing school?  

Later in the movie we see a character get killed, or so we think, as his loved ones flee the scene.  Immediately following his presumable demise, his relatives are nonchalant and dry eyed.  ("I'm not sitting on that messy couch," says one, displaying more emotion over a bit of clutter than he did over his brother's death ten minutes before.)  The dead guy does turn out to be alive later in the film… I guess the psychic relatives network is the explanation here. 

Women are sort of sidelined in this film.  Toni Collette has nothing much to do except shiver like a bunny.  Gloria Ruben is on screen for five seconds, and it really makes you wish there was a role in here for her.  And Vanessa Williams (who looks like she's 50 and has had some facelifts) has a supporting role as a cop who backs Shaft up, but it feels like a token effort.  The racial stereotypes are there too - - there almost have to be when a white kid kills a black kid because of his race.  But there's enough of a melting pot among both good and bad guys, and enough character twists (I like what happens to the white cop who hurls racist slurs at Shaft), that it feels basically honest.  

And really, all that aside, this movie has the Jackson factor in its favor.  Early on, Walter taunts Shaft with a horrifying racial slur and Shaft punches him in the nose.  Shaft's supervisor threatens to have him fired.  "For what?" Shaft asks, wide eyed.  He punches Walter again.  "That?"

Aaaawwww yeeeeeah.