Review of Chi-Raq (2015) by Flomink — 21 Feb 2020

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.