Chi-Raq opens with an elevated train stopping at the Wicker Park stop, the most gentrified stop in Chicago. This is where the all black nightclub is depicted. An hour later. A group of black women take over the armory, portrayed as a basketball court. Samuel L. Jackson, the shameful carnival barker, is criticizing the police, saying "if this was happening in YOUR neighborhood" how would you feel? Problem is: that armory is in Humboldt Park, a Puerto Rican neighborhood. Spike made a "satire" about the "black on black" violence in Englewood, but didn't set it in Englewood.
The characters don't act like, look like or talk like Chicagoans (even if Chicagoans spoke in nothing but rhyming, sexist cat calls). Is there some black group resembling the Grand Order of the Buffalo wearing weird hats and sitting around on velvet couches making decisions for the black population of Chicago? No. But this is what is depicted in this total mess of a film about the touchy subject of gun violence, which isn't exclusive to the black community.
Then there's the insurance salesman selling insurance to mothers for their young sons, since they are likely going to get killed by gunfire. This makes for a shocking display but do insurance companies actually do this? Truth be told, the LAST person an insurance company would want to insure is someone that they EXPECT will die in the near future. It's just nonsense created by Spike Lee.
Of course this wouldn't be an American movie about the problems of black people without a white savior and this time around it's John Cusack. Granted he gives one hellava performance as a preacher but he's still the obligatory white man saving the day. One would think Lee would skip this ingredient in the formula but nope. One would also like to think Spike wouldn't portray his own people as vulgar, ignorant, uneducated stereotypes but this is what he's handing us, having his characters speak in rhyming poetry that is so illiterate and profane that even an audience at a Green Mill poetry slam would probably be squirming, too afraid to boo because they might get shot.
(Example of typical dialogue you can expect in the movie Chi-Raq. Male: "I know you miss daddy dick nasty." Female: "Not more than you miss the steamy creamy hot buttery biscuit.")
Which makes it all the more preposterous when the women of the film demand respect. Excuse me, strange alien Nubian female creatures invented by Spike Lee and transplanted into planet earth via a film about Chicago--but isn't respect EARNED? You want us to respect a bunch of gun crazy thugs who speak in rhyming Ebonics who can only be reasoned with if the p*ssy is cut off? Do tell: WHY?? The characters in the film aren't even portrayed as living in poverty. Quite to the contrary, they might as well be living in Graceland, so lavish their homes are. We're supposed to respect these hoodlums? Care about these nut jobs? Sympathize with them?
But let's remember, before we forget this isn't a real portrayal of black Chicagoans; this is NOT a story about Chicago. This is a story about two fictional gangs, the Trojans and the Spartans (as if any black gang would choose those names), a play on an old Greek comedy no less. In one scene Lee actually has them wearing blue and red bandannas, as if they are Crips and Bloods, in Chicago!! Chi-Raq has nothing to do with Chicago. Nothing. And as such, it's completely worthless, because the gun violence in Chicago IS real and deserves more than this lazy satire with it's one dimensional characters.
But wait, hold on, it gets worse. Spike throws in a few musical numbers that are so horrendously choreographed that, if I didn't know better, I would think were Saturday Night Live sketches. Under any other pretext, this film would be a slightly below average comedy that could be excused for its pretentiousness because it's striving too hard to be experimental. But this is Chi-Raq, the new Spike Lee movie, the film that had the mayor of Chicago up in arms worrying about how it was going to make his city look. Well, worry no longer, Mr. Mayor, because there's nothing in this film that makes Chicago look bad (unless you consider the scene where you are portrayed squealing like a pig ala Deliverance), but there is a whole lot that makes Spike Lee look bad. There's no indictment of the city here, and there's no answers to the problems here either. What there is, is Mickey Rooney, Jerry Lewis and Peter Sellers at their absolute worst if they were wearing black face.
But let me end with a thought about the name of this film. It may be true that more people have been killed in Chicago than soldiers killed in Iraq, but what kind of idiotic comparison is that in the first place? We were the invading army in Iraq. If we included all the Iraqis that were killed as the result of that invasion, it would fall into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even over a million. So what an insult to the people of Iraq, to compare the black on black gang violence in Chicago to the illegal invasion and occupation of an entire country, and in doing so to only include the casualties of the occupying army as victims worth counting.
I'm just trying to figure out what was going through Spike Lee's head when he decided he wanted to make a movie about gun violence in Chicago and then got the bright idea to make it a sex comedy. But we have to remember this is the same guy who crowd funded a straight to Netflix remake of a totally obscure blaxploitation film and also remade Oldboy pretty much scene by scene for only he and God knows what reason.
The characters don't act like, look like or talk like Chicagoans (even if Chicagoans spoke in nothing but rhyming, sexist cat calls). Is there some black group resembling the Grand Order of the Buffalo wearing weird hats and sitting around on velvet couches making decisions for the black population of Chicago? No. But this is what is depicted in this total mess of a film about the touchy subject of gun violence, which isn't exclusive to the black community.
Then there's the insurance salesman selling insurance to mothers for their young sons, since they are likely going to get killed by gunfire. This makes for a shocking display but do insurance companies actually do this? Truth be told, the LAST person an insurance company would want to insure is someone that they EXPECT will die in the near future. It's just nonsense created by Spike Lee.
Of course this wouldn't be an American movie about the problems of black people without a white savior and this time around it's John Cusack. Granted he gives one hellava performance as a preacher but he's still the obligatory white man saving the day. One would think Lee would skip this ingredient in the formula but nope. One would also like to think Spike wouldn't portray his own people as vulgar, ignorant, uneducated stereotypes but this is what he's handing us, having his characters speak in rhyming poetry that is so illiterate and profane that even an audience at a Green Mill poetry slam would probably be squirming, too afraid to boo because they might get shot.
(Example of typical dialogue you can expect in the movie Chi-Raq. Male: "I know you miss daddy dick nasty." Female: "Not more than you miss the steamy creamy hot buttery biscuit.")
Which makes it all the more preposterous when the women of the film demand respect. Excuse me, strange alien Nubian female creatures invented by Spike Lee and transplanted into planet earth via a film about Chicago--but isn't respect EARNED? You want us to respect a bunch of gun crazy thugs who speak in rhyming Ebonics who can only be reasoned with if the p*ssy is cut off? Do tell: WHY?? The characters in the film aren't even portrayed as living in poverty. Quite to the contrary, they might as well be living in Graceland, so lavish their homes are. We're supposed to respect these hoodlums? Care about these nut jobs? Sympathize with them?
But let's remember, before we forget this isn't a real portrayal of black Chicagoans; this is NOT a story about Chicago. This is a story about two fictional gangs, the Trojans and the Spartans (as if any black gang would choose those names), a play on an old Greek comedy no less. In one scene Lee actually has them wearing blue and red bandannas, as if they are Crips and Bloods, in Chicago!! Chi-Raq has nothing to do with Chicago. Nothing. And as such, it's completely worthless, because the gun violence in Chicago IS real and deserves more than this lazy satire with it's one dimensional characters.
But wait, hold on, it gets worse. Spike throws in a few musical numbers that are so horrendously choreographed that, if I didn't know better, I would think were Saturday Night Live sketches. Under any other pretext, this film would be a slightly below average comedy that could be excused for its pretentiousness because it's striving too hard to be experimental. But this is Chi-Raq, the new Spike Lee movie, the film that had the mayor of Chicago up in arms worrying about how it was going to make his city look. Well, worry no longer, Mr. Mayor, because there's nothing in this film that makes Chicago look bad (unless you consider the scene where you are portrayed squealing like a pig ala Deliverance), but there is a whole lot that makes Spike Lee look bad. There's no indictment of the city here, and there's no answers to the problems here either. What there is, is Mickey Rooney, Jerry Lewis and Peter Sellers at their absolute worst if they were wearing black face.
But let me end with a thought about the name of this film. It may be true that more people have been killed in Chicago than soldiers killed in Iraq, but what kind of idiotic comparison is that in the first place? We were the invading army in Iraq. If we included all the Iraqis that were killed as the result of that invasion, it would fall into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even over a million. So what an insult to the people of Iraq, to compare the black on black gang violence in Chicago to the illegal invasion and occupation of an entire country, and in doing so to only include the casualties of the occupying army as victims worth counting.
I'm just trying to figure out what was going through Spike Lee's head when he decided he wanted to make a movie about gun violence in Chicago and then got the bright idea to make it a sex comedy. But we have to remember this is the same guy who crowd funded a straight to Netflix remake of a totally obscure blaxploitation film and also remade Oldboy pretty much scene by scene for only he and God knows what reason.