X
- 2015
- R
- Lionsgate Films
- 2 h 7 m
- 2015
- R
- Lionsgate Films
- 2 h 7 m
Summary Chi-Raq is a modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes. After the murder of a Child by a stray bullet, a group of women led by Lysistrata organize against the on-going violence in Chicago’s Southside creating a movement that challenges the nature of race, sex and violence in America and around the world...
Directed By: Spike Lee
Written By: Kevin Willmott, Aristophanes, Spike Lee
- 2015
- R
- Lionsgate Films
- 2 h 7 m
- 2015
- R
- Lionsgate Films
- 2 h 7 m
Chi-Raq
77
5.3
Where to Watch
Summary Chi-Raq is a modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes. After the murder of a Child by a stray bullet, a group of women led by Lysistrata organize against the on-going violence in Chicago’s Southside creating a movement that challenges the nature of race, sex and violence in America and around the world...
Directed By: Spike Lee
Written By: Kevin Willmott, Aristophanes, Spike Lee
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
77
84% Positive
31 Reviews
31 Reviews
14% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
77
84% Positive
31 Reviews
31 Reviews
14% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Erupting like a scalding geyser from the ground right beneath our feet, Spike Lee’s daring, dizzying, sympathetic, symphonic, vital, vehement Chi-Raq is the most urgently 2015 movie of 2015.
Nick Cannon’s complicated and masterful performance as Chi-Raq, a young man who embodies the contradictions of his community, who is both a perpetrator and a victim of the heartless violence that has surrounded him all his life, accomplishes that.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 66 User Ratings
5.3
41% Positive
27 Ratings
27 Ratings
30% Mixed
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
29% Negative
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 66 User Ratings
5.3
41% Positive
27 Ratings
27 Ratings
30% Mixed
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
29% Negative
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
This is a good movie to have group discussions on issue of gang violence. Adults should view it first, than children based on their level of maturity. In truth, he did give an answer to the problem - LOVE. But we have to include all its attributes in our everyday lives. As it is written, Love: is patient and kind, is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked, it does not keep account of the injury, it does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never fails. Yes, the answer is LOVE.
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This could have been a disaster with critics and at the box office, so kudos to Lee and the rest of his crew for taking a chance with some tricky material. The film combines elements of classic Greek theater with contemporary urban drama, and throws in a fair amount of humor and a couple of dance numbers for good measure. It takes Aristophanes's Lysistrata and sets it in contemporary Chicago, with a group of young ladies deciding to withhold their sexual favors until their menfolk decide to renounce violence. A totally unique film, and enjoyable to watch.
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It’s a shattering, thunderous wake-up alarm, a call to lay down arms, a gutsy social satire and a highly stylized work of fiction that sometimes feels as accurate and sobering as the crime reporting you see on the front page of this newspaper.
Lee’s vision of a scarred, gutted city may not please the tourism board, but his movie is better for it: Its seething dramatic texture captures a deeper, more elusive beauty that — like reconciliation, reform or any other human ideal — can only be achieved when the illusion of safety is left behind.
It doesn't all work. The energy and the performances by Cannon, Parris and Hudson can't carry a movie that careens from camp to tragedy to farce without taking a breath. Several scenes could have been cut, particularly a long, dumb take on sex and the Civil War that ends with a horny old goat in Stars-and-Bars skivvies.
If Chi-Raq disarms even a small percentage of those who see it, and provokes any reflection about a gun culture, the uses of satire and the plight of a sadly emblematic city, it was worth the effort. However mixed-up the results.
Though it sometimes recalls the irresistibly energetic, genre-bending feel of Lee’s best films – Do The Right Thing in particular – it lacks the assurance and unifying thrust that made those features work so well.
I give credit to Spike Lee for taking on a troubling problem in our inner cities, guns and gangs. But I'm not sure his style of movie making is a good match for this topic. Almost seemed to be making light of a serious problem. I was pleasantly surprised that the dialog was in poetic rhyme; I like a director that takes a chance.
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Nothing is really left to the imagination as this film constantly insists on beating you over the head with its messages, and the motives of its characters. From clunky, barely rhyming dialogue to music whose lyrics are just "this is what is happening, and this is why it's bad", much of it becomes insufferable as the movie progresses and it's constantly forced on to the listener. The first twenty minutes are very well made, and if the movie maintained that tone, it could have been very compelling. Half way through the film, however, it completely loses direction and decides, rather than telling a compelling story, to beat the viewer over the head with as many political messages and talking points as they could possibly think of when writing without any consideration for how it fit into the narrative, or the overall message of the movie (if it even has one beyond these talking points). The priest has to be one of the weakest performances in this movie. From the scene he is introduced to the end of the movie, he acts only to move the plot along or to try and stuff an already bloated movie with more messages and talking points. Beyond his poor performance, at times he'd seem to fit better in a death metal band than in a movie that wants anyone to take it seriously, his dialogue has a manic flow that rarely ever amounts to anything in the grand scheme of the movie. The narrative, at the aforementioned half way point, struggles to find out where it is, and where it wants to go, vaguely following the plot of the comedy it's based on, Lysistrata, but seemingly having no idea what to really do once it gets there. There are some funny moments, and at times the narrator can be pretty entertaining, and like I said earlier, the introduction is very compelling, but ultimately the movie is a mess that tries to say way too much, and do too much without any clear direction beyond delivering these messages as rapidly as possible.
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Spike Lee has sold out black women to save black "manhood," taking his old school definition of "sex" from the porn industry, which is ironic, since the film is about becoming conscious of your own "slave conditioning." Apparently the women in this film did not get that memo regarding sexuality. Also shamefully hetero normative. Lesbian, **** and trans gender people of color simply do not exist (other than one embarrassingly **** caricature). I expected a polemic examining the gender norms that enable male violence. Instead, this film went out of its way to reinforce a strict gender binary in which females are dressed as porn stars and move like
strippers and are the objects of lust. Women’s true power to end male violence is in waking up to their own "sex slave conditioning" and stop finding psychopathic pimps and murderers sexy—in life or on film. Chi-raq is one step forward, two steps back in analyzing and addressing the true cause of male gang violence--toxic hyper masculinity and the sexual scripts that enable it, which this film not only enthusiastically reinforces, but celebrates, making this "Joint" an epic fail.
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Production Company
40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks,
Amazon Studios
Release Date Dec 4, 2015
Duration 2 h 7 m
Rating R
Tagline This is an Emergency!!!
Website
http://www.chiraqthemovie.com/
Awards
Black Reel Awards
• 1 Win & 7 Nominations
Image Awards (NAACP)
• 4 Nominations
African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)
• 2 Wins & 3 Nominations
