Today, I awoke to news that Tamir Rice, the 12 year old who was shot and killed by Cleveland Police, had his hands in his pockets at the time of the shooting. He was shot so quickly that he did not have time to take his hands out of his pockets. I felt outraged. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Again. I was already feeling some kind of way about Laquan McDonald who was shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer in 2014, a shooting that was captured on dash cam video. I had planned on seeing Spike Lee's Chi-Raq film but after reading about Tamir Rice I knew I needed to see it sooner than later.
The film begins with a graphic of the United States divided in red, white and blue colors and the country formed by images of guns. We hear the title song, rapped by Nick Cannon, with animated lyrics. Samuel L. Jackson greets us as Dolmedes, a cross between Dolemite and an ancient Greek narrator, who appears on occasion to summarize events for the audience. Dolmedes provides comic relief in a film that deals with heavy subject matter. That is not to say that his appearance is the only time we experience comedy in the film. In fact, I went in knowing that the Greek play Lysistrata was the inspiration for the film.
Aristophanes, the author of Lysistrata, was known for a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, whose works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define popular culture even today (think Dr. Strangelove and in the televised buffoonery of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live).
After the murder of a child named Patti 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. Lysistrata is instructed to research Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee who was responsible for leading a women's peace movement that included a sex strike. Of the strike, Gbowee says, "The (sex) strike lasted, on and off, for a few months." In real life, the strike had little or no practical effect. However, in the film the strike leads to a showdown at a National Guard armory.
While it is true that many of the scenes in Chi-Raq were over the top and some reminded me of School Daze (not among my favorite of Lee's movies), there were others scenes that showed the seriousness of what is going on in Chicago, around the country and the world. The film showed the seriousness of oppression or the New Jim Crow: police brutality, racial profiling, concentrated poverty, historical marginalization and mass incarceration. It conveyed the urgency of the situation, as well. There's an appearance by Dolmedes at the armory and he is joined by a gang member and police man (two sides of a coin).
Overall, I enjoyed Chi-Raq. Some parts made me cry and other parts made me give Spike Lee a side-eye. However, I think the film was brilliantly made, gutsy and important. For that I give it a B+/A
The film begins with a graphic of the United States divided in red, white and blue colors and the country formed by images of guns. We hear the title song, rapped by Nick Cannon, with animated lyrics. Samuel L. Jackson greets us as Dolmedes, a cross between Dolemite and an ancient Greek narrator, who appears on occasion to summarize events for the audience. Dolmedes provides comic relief in a film that deals with heavy subject matter. That is not to say that his appearance is the only time we experience comedy in the film. In fact, I went in knowing that the Greek play Lysistrata was the inspiration for the film.
Aristophanes, the author of Lysistrata, was known for a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, whose works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define popular culture even today (think Dr. Strangelove and in the televised buffoonery of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live).
After the murder of a child named Patti 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. Lysistrata is instructed to research Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee who was responsible for leading a women's peace movement that included a sex strike. Of the strike, Gbowee says, "The (sex) strike lasted, on and off, for a few months." In real life, the strike had little or no practical effect. However, in the film the strike leads to a showdown at a National Guard armory.
While it is true that many of the scenes in Chi-Raq were over the top and some reminded me of School Daze (not among my favorite of Lee's movies), there were others scenes that showed the seriousness of what is going on in Chicago, around the country and the world. The film showed the seriousness of oppression or the New Jim Crow: police brutality, racial profiling, concentrated poverty, historical marginalization and mass incarceration. It conveyed the urgency of the situation, as well. There's an appearance by Dolmedes at the armory and he is joined by a gang member and police man (two sides of a coin).
Overall, I enjoyed Chi-Raq. Some parts made me cry and other parts made me give Spike Lee a side-eye. However, I think the film was brilliantly made, gutsy and important. For that I give it a B+/A