Spike Lee’s satire on gun crime comes out shooting and doesn’t know when to stop
Brash, sexy, satirical and deeply flawed, Spike Lee’s latest picture is an updated spin on Aristophanes’s play Lysistrata. The classical Greek comedy is relocated to a Chicago nicknamed Chi-Raq for its gang violence, gun crime and ever-increasing body count. Teyonah Parris makes a forceful impression as the girlfriend of a gang leader. She starts a peace movement among women, persuading them to withhold sex until the men stop fighting and start negotiating. It’s a neat idea, delivered with a fly swagger. But this overlong picture is already repetitive and unfocused by the second act; by the third, it has made its point a thousand times over.
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Brash, sexy, satirical and deeply flawed, Spike Lee’s latest picture is an updated spin on Aristophanes’s play Lysistrata. The classical Greek comedy is relocated to a Chicago nicknamed Chi-Raq for its gang violence, gun crime and ever-increasing body count. Teyonah Parris makes a forceful impression as the girlfriend of a gang leader. She starts a peace movement among women, persuading them to withhold sex until the men stop fighting and start negotiating. It’s a neat idea, delivered with a fly swagger. But this overlong picture is already repetitive and unfocused by the second act; by the third, it has made its point a thousand times over.
Continue reading...
- 12/4/2016
- by Wendy Ide
- The Guardian - Film News
MaryAnn’s quick take… Furious, funny, and deadly serious, this is an audacious, searing satire that swells into a raw, electrifying fantasy about how we might put aside savagery. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
A full year after it opened in the Us, Spike Lee’s latest film, the outraged and outrageous Chi-Raq, is finally opening in the UK. Yet after a summer of Black Lives Matter protests and racially charged politics on both sides of the Atlantic, it still feels entirely of the moment. In a Chicago so beset by violent death that it’s more like the ongoing war zone of Iraq than any city in the supposedly greatest country in the world should be, a child is caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout… and her death is the last...
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
A full year after it opened in the Us, Spike Lee’s latest film, the outraged and outrageous Chi-Raq, is finally opening in the UK. Yet after a summer of Black Lives Matter protests and racially charged politics on both sides of the Atlantic, it still feels entirely of the moment. In a Chicago so beset by violent death that it’s more like the ongoing war zone of Iraq than any city in the supposedly greatest country in the world should be, a child is caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout… and her death is the last...
- 12/1/2016
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
The wives and girlfriends of Chicago gang members find a novel way to combat spiralling violence in Lee’s tactless, haranguing adaptation of Aristophanes
Making peace is about changing the narrative, they say, and Spike Lee just found a new narrative for the #blacklivesmatter debate. Or actually an extremely old one. With screenwriter Kevin Willmott, he has adapted Aristophanes’s comedy Lysistrata from 411Bc, about one woman’s mission to end the Peloponnesian war with a sex strike.
The scene is present-day Chicago, whose tough neighbourhoods are nicknamed Chi-Raq (pronounced “shy-rack”) in honour of their bullet-ridden similarity to Iraq, and the fact that the Us government spends more on reconstructing Middle East war zones than it would ever dream of spending on its own inner cities. There is in fact a generational debate in this film about whether the term “Chi-Raq” is empowering satire or cynical despair. Like all the dialogue,...
Making peace is about changing the narrative, they say, and Spike Lee just found a new narrative for the #blacklivesmatter debate. Or actually an extremely old one. With screenwriter Kevin Willmott, he has adapted Aristophanes’s comedy Lysistrata from 411Bc, about one woman’s mission to end the Peloponnesian war with a sex strike.
The scene is present-day Chicago, whose tough neighbourhoods are nicknamed Chi-Raq (pronounced “shy-rack”) in honour of their bullet-ridden similarity to Iraq, and the fact that the Us government spends more on reconstructing Middle East war zones than it would ever dream of spending on its own inner cities. There is in fact a generational debate in this film about whether the term “Chi-Raq” is empowering satire or cynical despair. Like all the dialogue,...
- 12/1/2016
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Spike Lee responded to Chance the Rapper's criticism of his new movie Chi-Raq by noting the rapper's father, Ken Williams-Bennett, works with Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel in an interview on MSNBC.
"Show me where he made a criticism about the mayor," Lee said of Williams-Bennett, who serves as Emanuel's deputy chief of staff and director of public engagement. "I think your findings will be surprising. He has not criticized the mayor."
In a string of recent tweets, Chance called Chi-Raq "goofy," "exploitive" and "problematic," and echoed sentiments that a...
"Show me where he made a criticism about the mayor," Lee said of Williams-Bennett, who serves as Emanuel's deputy chief of staff and director of public engagement. "I think your findings will be surprising. He has not criticized the mayor."
In a string of recent tweets, Chance called Chi-Raq "goofy," "exploitive" and "problematic," and echoed sentiments that a...
- 12/10/2015
- Rollingstone.com
There are few filmmakers out there with more of a personal touch than Spike Lee. The director is never more interesting than when a social issue has gotten his ire, with the recently released Chi-Raq being no exception. Lee can be a hit or miss artist, but he’s rarely boring, that’s for sure. With a career now featuring 25 theatrical titles (not to mention his work on television), he’s also far more prolific than folks seem to realize. As such (along with his impending honorary Oscar from the Academy), I wanted to spend a quick moment talking about him, especially since the precursor season prevented me from discussing Chi-Raq before it opened in limited release over the weekend… Chi-Raq is basically a modern day adaptation of Aristophanes’ ancient Greek play Lysistrata. Here, instead of Greece, it’s Chicago, with gang/gun violence being what inspires the women of Chicago (or,...
- 12/7/2015
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
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