`Shaft’ update angry but less political, complex

In theaters

SHAFT. Directed by John Singleton. Written by Singleton, Richard Price and Shane Salerno. Running time: 98 minutes. Rated R.

What better litmus test to gauge the timidity of our times and the political correctness of our culture than to make a movie based on Gordon Parks’ 1971 film, “Shaft,” which wasn’t just about the myth of black male sexuality as realized in Richard Roundtree’s deeply sexual character John Shaft, but also about race, racial tension and the righteous anger that underscored the black experience in urban America during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Sanford Phippen, a Maine author currently writing a book on race, saw the first “Shaft” when it opened in New York theaters. “The black community turned out in force for that film,” he recalls. “The theater at my screening was packed, absolutely alive with energy. It was time to see a superhero who was black, and not another white James Bond. People were hungry for it.”

What becomes immediately clear when comparing the two films is the tone Singleton strikes throughout — anger has become bemusement, the bite of injustice has mellowed, the previous film’s rampant sexuality has been neutered into a more benign, intangible state.

Now played by Samuel L. Jackson, John Shaft is still the man, but he’s a less complicated man. He’s no longer a black man bearing the weight of social injustice, but a black man who’s come into his own as the result of a cultural shift. He’s angry, for sure, but that anger is never turned inward, which suggests that this Shaft is at peace with who he is.

The passing of three decades has wrought other differences: The film’s violent plot mirrors the original in that it sinks Shaft straight into the throes of a racially motivated murder, but this time the murder isn’t used as a political statement. Instead, it’s used as a plot element meant to spark the action and — naturally — draw people to the box office.

The good news here is that the script is nevertheless gritty. Richard Price, who wrote “Clockers,” is the film’s chief scribe, and his influence is all over the dialogue, which is as tough and as sharp as the people the film depicts. Listening to one of the film’s villains speak — Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright) in particular — is a rare pleasure.

What’s better is that the action is never glamorized — Singleton is no John Woo, which is great because Singleton is more interested in truth. His film has a refreshing matter-of-factness, a snubbing of special effects that actually increases the weight and the intensity of the action. When somebody gets shot, they simply drop dead. There are no unnecessary histrionics, and — unlike a Woo film — frightened pigeons play no part in death’s equation.

Finally, the film’s cast — Jackson, Vanessa Williams, Christian Bale, Toni Collette, Busta Rhymes, Dan Hedaya and Richard Roundtree in cameo as Shaft’s uncle — wisely never play their parts for camp. This may be a popcorn movie — and one that’s great fun to watch — but it has serious undertones. Camp would have killed it.

Grade: B+

On video

ANNA AND THE KING. Directed by Andy Tennant. Written by Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes. Running time: 140 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Andy Tennant’s Academy Award-winning “Anna and the King” is a grand retelling of Anna Leonowens’ diaries, those vivid accounts of a prim Victorian schoolteacher dispatched to Siam in 1862 to tutor King Mongkut’s 58 children and introduce them to Western culture.

Her story is hardly new. In 1946, Rex Harrison and Irene Dunn starred in “Anna and the King of Siam”; in 1956 Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner sang and danced to Rodgers and Hammerstein in “The King and I”; last year Warner Bros. offered an animated debacle of the story; and Broadway recently explored a stage version in a Tony Award-winning musical.

Now, Leonowens’ diaries are given their most lavish treatment to date in a film that pares down its strong personalities in favor of whistling a post-feminist tune.

As visually sumptuous as Scorsese’s “Kundun” and Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor,” “Anna and the King” is filmmaking on an epic scale. It’s no musical, but it does takes its cues from nearly all of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s songs, especially “Getting to Know You,” “A Puzzlement” and “Shall We Dance?” which screenwriters Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes seamlessly wed to their literate script.

As Anna, Jodie Foster is more willful and daring than her predecessors, but her humorless, tight-lipped performance comes at a price: She doesn’t inhabit Anna the person so much as she inhabits Anna the icon. As good as Foster is — and sometimes she’s very good — the white-knuckled force driving her performance is more cerebral than soulful, which translates on-screen during her initial flirtations with Mongkut.

Luckily, director Tennant has Hong Kong action star Chow Yun-Fat to lift those moments. His Mongkut is no barking, foot-stomping caricature; instead, he’s a charming, humane king who perfectly complements Foster’s Anna, a frigid woman who eventually thaws as this relationship gathers emotional steam.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, Tuesday and Thursday on WLBZ’s “NEWS CENTER 5:30 Today” and “NEWS CENTER Tonight,” and Saturday and Sunday on NEWS CENTER’s statewide “Morning Report.”