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63
11th Hour, The
47
27 Dresses
29
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
39
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81
Bamako
84
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
47
Bella
68
Business of Being Born, The
69
Charlie Wilson's War
64
Cloverfield
30
Cover
68
Delirious
92
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
43
Final Season, The
41
First Sunday
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
65
Great Debaters, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
52
Hollywood Dreams
7
Hottie and the Nottie, The
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
15
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
81
Juno
70
Lars and the Real Girl
47
Lions for Lambs
41
Mad Money
71
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
xx
Moondance Alexander
53
Music Within
77
Nanking
44
Nina's Heavenly Delights
24
One Missed Call
74
Orphanage, The
30
Over Her Dead Body
39
P.S. I Love You
37
P2
46
Reservation Road
55
Resurrecting the Champ
57
Romulus, My Father
85
Savages, The
78
Starting Out in the Evening
83
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
57
Teeth
92
There Will Be Blood
38
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
32
Untraceable
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
68
War Dance
71
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
43
Youth Without Youth
92
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
92
There Will Be Blood
85
Savages, The
84
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
83
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
81
Juno
81
Bamako
78
Starting Out in the Evening
77
Nanking
74
Orphanage, The
71
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
71
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
70
Lars and the Real Girl
69
Charlie Wilson's War
68
Business of Being Born, The
68
Delirious
68
War Dance
65
Great Debaters, The
64
Cloverfield
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
63
11th Hour, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
57
Romulus, My Father
57
Teeth
55
Resurrecting the Champ
53
Music Within
52
Hollywood Dreams
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
47
Bella
47
Lions for Lambs
47
27 Dresses
46
Reservation Road
44
Nina's Heavenly Delights
43
Youth Without Youth
43
Final Season, The
41
Mad Money
41
First Sunday
39
Alvin and the Chipmunks
39
P.S. I Love You
38
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
37
P2
32
Untraceable
30
Over Her Dead Body
30
Cover
29
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
24
One Missed Call
15
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
7
Hottie and the Nottie, The
xx
Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Shaft
Paramount Pictures
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for strong violence and language
Starring
Samuel L. Jackson,
Vanessa L. Williams,
and
Jeffrey Wright
A murderer tries to kill the only witness to his last crime. Shaft (Jackson) and his sidekick (Williams) are trying to catch the murderer.
| GENRE(S): |
Crime
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Ernest Tidyman (novel)
John Singleton (also story)
Shane Salerno (also story)
Richard Price
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
John Singleton
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 12, 2000
Video: December 12, 2000
Theatrical: June 16, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
99 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
88
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
With Jackson leading the way, Shaft has style, punch, and street cred. It's a hot cool update.

75
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
Shaft is what summer action flicks should be... thanks to superior writing, acting and direction.

75
USA Today
Mike Clark
It's fast, easy on the eyes, full of funny putdowns and cast well enough to have two memorable villains.

75
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
If nothing else, Shaft is spicy fast food.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Shaft has everything --smart writing, shrewd direction and a handful of performances that are first-rate by any standard.

75
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Violent, cool and street-smart, Shaft supplies everything you want in a summer movie.

75
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
There's good trash: throwaway, intellectually undemanding action movies that, despite their heavy body counts and hard edges, are executed with a touch of class and a sunny disposition.

75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Shaft is still enormously involving. It's popcorn, but very fresh.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
The new movie, like its predecessor, is a crime thriller with a moral viewpoint, an eye and ear for street color and a taste for macho movie fantasy.

70
Variety
Robert Koehler
Samuel L. Jackson instantly takes the mantle from Mr. Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree, and runs with it on pure style and charisma.

67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Essentially works, even though the script is a mess and John Singleton's direction is often clumsy and heavy-handed to an annoying degree.

63
San Francisco Examiner
Wesley Morris
The movie's primary narrative weakness is that its racism plot points seem ripped from the headlines of a "Geraldo" newsletter and stretched into a string of terribly executed car chases.

63
Miami Herald
Phoebe Flowers
It's not easy to forgive a movie that so ungratefully wastes its potential with such a poorly structured plot, but Shaft has a few redeeming moments up its sleeve after all.

63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
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. Is it better than I expected? Yes.

60
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
Lean, fast and undeniably entertaining.

60
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
It's a bad sign when audience enthusiasm peaks during the credits sequence.

60
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Shaft scores by lacing ba-da-boom action with social pertinence.
60
TNT RoughCut
Susannah Breslin
Singleton's lack of influence makes Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" look far funkier in comparison.

54
Mr. Showbiz
Kevin Maynard
This avenging cat gets no action whatsoever. Neither does the movie, despite a terrific cast and a heap of street style.

50
Washington Post
Rita Kempley
Shaft? Not in this splashy-but-empty remake he isn't.

50
Film.com
Robert Horton
The movie itself gets scattered.

50
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
As an action flick, Shaft is clumsy out of the gate and overfond of hurtling stuntmen through windows.

50
Film.com
Tom Keogh
Shaft is a decent popcorn movie and Jackson rises to the responsibility of appearing bigger than life.

50
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
The storyline goes from bad to worse as one-dimensional characters gradually flatten out into pure stick figures, and the crime plot goes from hokey to implausible.

50
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
(If) you're one of those killjoys who demands logic, coherence and a semblance of human life from a movie, this one will leave you cold.

40
Slate
David Edelstein
A pretty good action flick -- twisty, marvelously acted, and energetically (if not always coherently) staged.

40
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
As an action thriller with music by Isaac Hayes it's not bad.

40
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
The main thing the new Shaft gets right is casting for the title role. It's too bad the rest of the film doesn't hold your attention the way he does.

30
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
This may be the first movie that runs under two hours and yet has no attention span. Characters are abandoned and picked up; narrative threads dissolve before your very eyes.

30
Time
Richard Schickel
This is not necessarily an improvement, but it's not a total disaster either.

25
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
The plot is a shameless plea for vigilante violence, and the dignity of the black hero is outweighed by the ethnically marked evil of his Hispanic antagonist. Beneath its crisp veneer, much of the movie is a high-energy hymn to hate.

20
LA Weekly
Manohla Dargis
What Jackson's Shaft can't do is talk the talk, or much of anything else, in director John Singleton's feature-length insult to one of the more cherished modern screen icons.

20
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Singleton's version is cynical and silly--one long set-up to a closing scene that promises, or threatens, a sequel.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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