Movie Review: 'Chi-Raq'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- When the first line in a movie is, "This is an emergency," as it is in Chi-Raq, chances are that the film is announcing its intentions to be taken seriously.
Even if the movie isn't always serious.
Welcome back to the Movies That Matter spotlight, Spike Lee.
Lee has had his share of directorial outings that were timely, relevant, and/or artistically triumphant.
After all, his accomplished and prolific resume includes Do the Right Thing, Get on the Bus, 4 Little Girls, Malcolm X, and Inside Man.
So the fact that his latest, Chi-Raq, speaks to our times should come as no surprise.
What is surprising, though, is that the fiery contemporary comedy is based on an a 2,400-year-old play – that's 411 B.C., to be exact.
Chi-Raq (rhymes with Iraq) is a modern-day adaptation of the ancient Greek play, Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, a bawdy comedy in which the women of Athens attempt to bring an end to the Peloponnesian War by denying sex to all the men in their lives.
In the screenplay by Kevin Willmott and director Lee, the backdrop is gang violence in Chicago. But as anyone who has even been reading just the headlines in recent years can tell you, it stands in for anywhere and everywhere.
Lee kicks things off by reminding us that, in the last 15 years, more Americans have been killed in Chicago than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
What that indicates is that this is not to be a polite discussion of the issue of the tragically high level of violence in our gun-embracing culture, but an in-your-face satire about something scandalous and urgent.
After the death of a child as the result of a stray bullet, a group of women led by Lysistrata, played by Teyonah Parris, organize and create a movement designed to lower, if not erase, the level of gun violence on Chicago's South Side. The women decide that, in order to curb the bloodshed, there will be no more sex for the men.
This gutsy social satire treats gun violence as the plague that it is.
The film features Nick Cannon as rising rapper and gang leader Chi-Raq, Wesley Snipes as a rival gang leader called Cyclops, John Cusack as an activist priest, Jennifer Hudson as a grieving mother, Samuel L. Jackson as a one-man Greek chorus, and Angela Bassett as Miss
Helen, a bookstore proprietor whose life was changed irrevocably by a horrendous occurrence 25 years ago and who is sickened by the violence she sees all around her.
When Miss Helen suggests to Lysistrata that she and the other young women use their sexuality for peace, Lysistrata enlists all the women to go on sexual lockdown.
In creating a crowded omnibus of history lessons, political activism, sex farce, musical numbers, and dialogue delivered in rhyming couplets, Lee – perhaps inevitably -- indulges several wild tone shifts and repetitious passages.
But the gravitas of the subject matter, combined with the passion of the film's argument, carries the day and makes any complaints about style seem like nitpicking.
Moreover, the film's moderate body count, powerful ending, and stinging commentary about how desensitized we are to events that we should find far beyond shocking land so soberly and convincingly, we extend Spike considerable Lee-way whenever we find him pouring on the outrageousness.
As for his large ensemble, they give Lee what he wants, with the marvelous and powerful Angela Bassett the first among equals.
So we'll withhold 3 stars out of 4 for an exuberant and provocative exploration of our gun culture, which could certainly be described as a form of societal madness that cries out for movies like this one. Chi-Raq is Spike Lee's cinematic wakeup call.
