Samuel L Jackson is, says director John Singleton, one of a tiny handful of actors who can play a role like John Shaft today.
The title character in the new movie is the nephew of the original John Shaft (Roundtree himself puts in an appearance as ‘Uncle John’, while original director Parks has a cameo in the Lenox Lounge scene). And, like his predecessor, he is a top cop battling the drug lords and corruption within the NYPD.
The story - on which Singleton collaborated with Richard Price (Oscar-nominated for The Color of Money, whose subsequent credits have included Sea of Love and Ransom) and Armageddon co-writer Shane Salerno - begins with Shaft arresting a spoiled young rich kid called Walter Wade (played by American Psycho’s Christian Bale) for the murder of a black student. But Wade flees the country while out on bail, and it is not until two years later that Shaft is able to get him into custody when he tries to slip back into the country.
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“I’ll be walking down the street in New York City, and wherever I’m going, people are still screaming out ‘Shaft!’ I get so much love.
It’s just incredible!”
Richard Roundtree
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Thanks to the influence of his wealthy father, however, Wade is soon back out on the street, and launches into a vendetta designed to rid himself forever both of the one witness who can tie him to the murder - Diane Palmieri, played by Australian actress Toni Collette - and of the troublesome Shaft himself. Before long, Shaft is under threat, not just from Wade, but also from a couple of corrupt cops within his own Precinct; and from Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright), a Dominican drug lord whom Shaft has earlier humiliated in front of his entire neighbourhood.
The beleaguered cop’s only real allies are another cop, Carmen (Vanessa Williams), and his street-wise pal, Rasaan, played by Busta Rhymes. Between them, they represent the two levels on which Shaft operates: the rules of police procedure, and the rules of the street.
“Carmen is not a nagging wife,” jokes singer-turned-actress Williams, who recently won an NAACP Image Award for her performance in Soul Food, “but she does get tired of Shaft trying to do it all by himself. She lets him go, but she kind of rolls her eyes and says, ‘Okay, that’s what I’m dealing with!’”
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"John Shaft was our first real hero. He was strong, he was smart, he was unafraid. He had the power and even the ego that we all wanted to have "
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“And I’m pretty much the guy Shaft can’t be because he’s a cop,” says Rhymes, who segued from hip-hop group Leaders of the New School to record-producing and acting in films as varied as Singleton’s Higher Learning and The Rugrats Movie, in which he was the voice of the Reptar Wagon.
Schreck makes a move on lead actress Greta Schroeder
(Catherine McCormack)
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