Staying Fit
Rating: R
Run time: 1 hour, 51 minutes
Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Richard Roundtree, Jessie T. Usher, Regina Hall
Director: Tim Story
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No. 1 box office star Samuel L. Jackson, 70, struts his obstreperous stuff as private detective John Shaft in Hollywood's oddest trilogy: three movies all called Shaft — not Shaft 1, 2 and 3 — two starring Jackson. (Several other, less significant sequels had other names.) Director Gordon Parks’ 1971 original starring Richard Roundtree gave the gumshoe genre an original jolt and served as a central influence on Quentin Tarantino's career. Thanks to Shaft, the first major black director got his first hit and theme composer Isaac Hayes became the third black Oscar winner ever.
In John Singleton's 2000 sequel (again called Shaft), Jackson took the part of the sleuth who won't cop out as a sex machine to all the chicks, with Roundtree, 76, as his elder relative. The film mostly misfired, marred by creative strife between Jackson, white writer Richard Price and Singleton, who defied Price's Jackson-enraging rewrites by adding back zingy Shaft lines like, “It's my duty to please the booty.” But Jackson's Shaft update solidified his reputation. Critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Jackson has a way of bringing weight to his roles. He always looks like he means it."
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