Spike Lee is back. This film–based on the classic Greek story of Lysistrata–is about a group of Chicago women who become fed-up with the violence and organize a sex strike to force their men into peace. It’s a provocative idea clearly designed to raise questions, and Lee proves yet again that he’s a master of raising awareness to issues that are too often ignored.
What Works: Lee’s last few films have been “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” a remake of “Old Boy,” and the nearly-unwatchable “Red Hook Summer” which was (unfortunately) billed as a quasi-sequel to Spike’s most beloved film “Do the Right Thing.” So to call “Chi-Raq” a “return a form” is an understatement. It is the first Spike Lee film people have had any real interest in since “Inside Man” and the most interesting non-paycheck job (as “Inside Man” surely was) since “25th Hour” over 12 years ago. With this film, Lee returns to the conversation and actively attempts to shape it, reclaiming the standard that (shudder) Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels have been happy to hold for him in the meantime.
The movie moves with bristling, restless energy, and glitters with well-crafted set pieces, like an opening rap performance shaped into an orgy of violence and sex or a closing bedroom duel set-up like a gladiator match. The film has many colorful performances from Wesley Snipes as a giggly gangster literally gleeful in his sadism to Samuel L. Jackson’s orange-suited narrator.
But the best are two performances that could have easily been cartoonish in lesser hands: Teyonah Parris as Lysistrata–as sexy and confident as a young Pam Grier and perhaps with more range to boot–and a shockingly good Nick Cannon. You heard me right, that Nick Cannon. Yes, he’s in a movie with John Cusack and Angela Bassett and out-acts them both, and I’m as surprised to be typing that sentence as you are to read it. His narcissistic nihilism perfectly nails the “I’m better than the world”/”Fuck the world”/”the world’s bad and I’m the baddest in it” aspirational despair at the heart of gang culture. I can’t believe I’m typing this sentence, but Nick Cannon is a revelation, and worthy of awards consideration.
What Doesn’t Work: As with too many of Spike’s movies–like “Bamboozled”–he takes an interesting core concept and overloads it with every opinion he’s ever had. His “kitchen sink” approach too often weighs down otherwise good movies, and “Chi-Raq” is easily 15 minutes too long, and just about as infuriating as it is interesting.
Did John Cusack’s preacher really need to hysterically sermonize for an unbelievably long scene? Did we really need montages of the sex strike spreading globally? [Tokyo and Australia have extremely low gun fatalities, so what are the women there protesting exactly?] Did we need Angela Bassett to give lectures on everything from “the rap music” to why even older women should join the sex strike or her estranged husband (Steve Harris) giving his rebuttal?
And Lee–ever the segregationist–just can’t resist throwing in a couple of negative portrayals of white man/black woman couples. Portrayals like the sleazy, interracially-married mayor of Chicago who publicly is for gun control but privately doesn’t care about it–I guess this is based on NYC’s Bill de Blasio…even though his own police turned on him when he so much as mentioned prejudiced law enforcement–and then the film’s most baffling scene: when Lysistrata seduces an Illinois National Guard “General” who is, inexplicably, pro-Confederacy. Why would a Northern military professional say “our rebels” and have delusions of Southern Supremacy? This feels like an excuse for Lee to shoehorn-in the Confederate flag debate (and Don Imus as the General says “nappy headed hoes”) more than anything that would plausibly happen.
What I Would Have Done Differently: The film isn’t perfect, but it might inspire a real conversation. For Lee these days, that’s about all you can ask for, and I don’t intend to be too picky on his best film in years.