Review of Chi-Raq (2015) by Robby C — 09 Feb 2016

"Chi-Raq" can only be described as vibrant filmmaking. Vibrant filmmaking with a whirling sense of humor, a flamboyant visual style, a tactile drive, and an irrefutable feeling of energy. It is Spike Lee's twenty-fifth film, said to be a return to form after years of mostly panned endeavors, and is a modern-day adaptation of classic Greek play "Lysistrata." Being unfamiliar with Lee's past, hot-blooded works (the film acts as my introduction to his auteuristic sensibilities), and uninformed when it comes to ancient plays written by Aristophanes, I am perhaps the best audience for "Chi-Raq," so wholly incapable of anything even resembling comparison that I can only critique what's in front of me, which, as it so happens, is deliriously good.

"Chi-Raq" is messy, overlong, and divisive. But it is also cathartic and blazing, beautiful and ugly, hyperkinetic yet luminously discerning, and Lee, consistently in the public eye for his fervid (and sometimes controversial) views on race and social equality, is the only director that could have made it. Without attaching his legendary name to it, we might presume that "Chi-Raq" is the result of a sinfully talented young filmmaker with a lot on his mind and his heart, with plenty of originality, visual kick, and finger-licking comicality to accentuate the social commentary that acts as the motor of it all. I'm not one able to honestly say whether or not it is the best thing Lee has done in a decade, but I can say that it is one of the best films of 2015. There isn't anything like it, and the more we come to accept its outré stylings and characterizations, the more we can come to admire that it isn't a lost work of the past, rather an explosive work of the now.

The title of the film refers to Chicago, Illinois (rhyming with Iraq), and mostly takes place in the neighborhood of Englewood, an area whose gang violence and rapid crime is so prevalent that the majority of the area considers it to be a battleground. Most mind their own business, attempting to live their lives safely as carnage runs around them at an abominable pace. But the line is finally drawn when the eleven-year-old daughter of a young woman (Jennifer Hudson) is accidentally killed in a gunfight perpetrated by Demetrius Dupree (Nick Cannon) and Cyclops (Wesley Snipes), Englewood's rival gang leaders. At that moment does an uprising begin to take root, Demetrius's girlfriend, Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), being a driving force behind it after it seems that she can't continue being a party to relentless community violence any longer.

The solution? She, along with almost every single woman in the neighborhood, decides to go on a sex strike, unwilling to please their men until they come to a kind of resolution that will prevent further damage to the region. A wild plot it is, but effective it could possibly be - used to control and exploiting malice as a way to get what they want, a lack of sexual worship could be the undoing for these wicked men. Things only get more powerful when the movement begins to gain notoriety around the globe. "No peace," signs from its female protestors read, "no pussy.".

"Chi-Raq" is supplied with a disarming sense of satirical humor, finding a laudable balance between its farcical battle-of-the-sexes flavors and its more serious undertones, which is, ultimately, the discussion of racial inequalities in America in a way that just might be what audiences need right now. Most of its linguistic content whimsically rhymes (Lee and director/film professor Kevin Willmott's screenplay is by turns scornful, lyrical, and rhythmic, almost imitating hip-hop in some scenes), and Samuel L. Jackson, playing the film's embodied narrator as if he were a circus ringleader, is a stylistic flourish with the potential to derail pervasive seriousness but totally works in response to Lee's inimitable filmmaking genius.

The performances are something to behold, too. Cannon reinvents his go-to reality TV host persona for something much rougher, and the transformation is staggering; Angela Bassett, as Lysistrata's neighbor who has much to do with her metamorphose into social activist, is spirited and eloquent. Hudson is superb in her supporting role as a mother suffering from the effects of living in a nightmarish community, and John Cusack gets a couple of fierce monologues in to set the scenery. But much of "Chi-Raq's" animalistic interest comes from the presence of Teyonah Parris (whose performance in 2014's "Dear White People" was certainly one of the best things about that film), who plainly announces herself as being a star to keep a hawk eye on, an Oscar nomination something I feel could have blessed her if the Academy weren't so godforsakenly white or if "Chi-Raq" received wider release or if it had come out just a few weeks earlier. Regardless, she is a force of nature - she knocks us off our feet, her dedication awesome.

As a whole, "Chi-Raq" is gutsy and imperfect, but it is also frenetic, colorful, and, most importantly, timely. In the process of skimming the web have I discovered that it has been much more enjoyed by critics than general audiences, who can't seem to get past its overall eccentricities (one consumer irritated as to why the film must rhyme, prompting an eye-roll from me). But don't let them obsess you - let them steal your heart and take you on a wild, cinematic, and bawdily funny ride. This is first-rate filmmaking in need of widespread appreciation. Where it might find it is more ambiguous than I'd like it to be.