GamerTab That was an excellent one.

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Clifton Johnson I get it: Lysistrata in modern day Chicago. But it feels like Spike needed to make some hard choices. Ancient Greek or Modern America? Both and? No. You end up with selective rhyming, female stereotypes and over-simplified gang violence...it failed as an adaptation, it failed as a realistic portrayal. So much unrealized potential here. West Side Story it is not.

Dan1863Sickles I wasn't expecting much from this movie, because Spike Lee films are almost always crudely written, badly directed, and riddled with specious reasoning, shrill self-pity, easy outrage, and many different forms of hypocrisy. All those familiar elements are present in CHI- RAQ in great abundance.But I still give the movie three stars, because the performance of Jennifer Hudson as a young mother who loses her child to gang violence on the streets of Chicago's South Side is genuinely moving. I've never seen a more authentic performance in a Spike Lee film. Jennifer Hudson's pain is so real she almost makes you forget the stilted dialogue, the awkward acting, the clumsy dance routines, and the sexual "humor" that's like a backed-up toilet that explodes in your face for an hour and a half.Jennifer Hudson is amazing, but it's a shame the way fine actors like Samuel Jackson and Wesley Snipes are forced to clown and abase themselves in one lame minstrel show routine after another. All the other females in the movie are demeaned in every scene. Spike parades them half-naked like slaves on the auction block while letting them chant shrill verse about how liberated they are. It's obvious who really dreams about enslaving black women! The violence itself is talked about endlessly, but the anger behind it is never even acknowledged. Instead of dealing with real emotions Spike Lee falls back (not for the first time) on one of the most hateful stereotypes about black people, i.e. that they have over-sized sex drives and under-sized brains. At the end of the film, the main gangster is dragged off to jail in handcuffs, after confessing his crimes. No more violence for him! No more sex, either, but you get the impression that to Spike Lee sex is at least as disgusting as violence. No wonder the only good white person in the movie is a Catholic priest! Oh, and speaking of Catholic priests. John Cusack is unconvincing from start to finish as the "ghetto priest." But there's more to this than bad acting. Spike Lee loves to take cheap shots at America and the flag, but evidently he knows better than to mess with the Catholic Church. He certainly doesn't mention the fact that the Church profited for centuries from the African slave trade. More to the point, he ignores the fact that racism in Chicago has always been worst in Catholic neighborhoods. (These are the people who threw rocks at Martin Luther King in 1968. The priest in the movie doesn't bring that up!)To put the film in perspective: the South Side of Chicago is all black today, but up until 1919 or so it was solidly Irish Catholic. When the blacks tried to move in, the Irish rioted. Dozens of black men, women, and children were killed. Eventually the whites moved out and the South Side became the "black belt" that it is today. What's interesting in the context of the film is that Cusack's character never acknowledges the city's past or the Catholic Church's long-standing indifference to the simmering racial hatred in blue-collar neighborhoods. During the Depression there was a brilliant Irish author from Chicago named James T. Farrell, and he dramatized the self-destructive mixture of racism and Catholicism brilliantly in a novel called STUDS LONIGAN. And guess what? The Catholic Church immediately banned the book. But the wonderful priest in the movie doesn't mention that either! Given the way Spike sneers at black people in this movie (and elsewhere) for not reading books, it's astonishing how ignorant he is of Chicago history and how little effort he makes to research his films. The violence in Chi-Raq is unreal because it's not rooted in history, and because Spike knows better than to challenge the wrong white people.

LeonardHaid Chi-Raq begins promisingly, with a brutally poignant rap about the city of Chicago. It's a passionate summing up of what Chicago is to this rapper, an emotional stripping down of what it is to be attached to such a messed-up entity. There is the brilliant Samuel L. Jackson's ebonologue, some stats backing up the mess that Chicago has become, and a child is murdered. I'm hoping at this point that Spike Lee has decided enough already with the cinematic pretentiousness that polluted several of his other movies, and that I'm about to see a really good film. Unfortunately, a really good film never materializes. Though there is a lot to like about Chi-Raq, Spike Lee kept spoiling it for me. For example, I really like the rhyming couplet dialogue. But why does there have to be that schmaltzy piano music playing while people are talking. I loathe these cinematic manipulations that remind the audience that they are witnessing some deep, meaningful stuff. And why do people talk in rhyming couplets sometimes, but not other times? I think Spike Lee wasn't sure what he wanted to make, so he just threw everything into the pot, and hoped that it would taste great. My ultimate disappointment about Chi-Raq is with its ultimate message, that Love is the Answer. True solutions, and the core reason why there are horrendous problems in the first place, is not about loving thy neighbor; it's a systemic disease. Spike Lee seems to sort of get this for a while, but he has no time to excavate this hugely important issue because he has to stick to the rather ridiculous plot, has to explore female power and empowerment, and we all know that the true mark of a great film, historically, has been to include plenty of booty. There is a failure to dig deeper into why Chicago has become Chi-Raq, and I wonder if Spike Lee even has an understanding of that. His preaching about jobs means nothing since he fails to make any kind of intelligent expression about why there are so few opportunities to make an honest living in the first place. Overall, Chi-Raq is a mess that misses the mark, but it is entertaining, and the acting is superb, with a special nod to Wesley Snipes, who has a small role but is riveting in it.

parleon-thedon Positives:1. Nick Cannon delivered a very good performance (I was surprised because I thought he was going suck)2. The tone can be funny3. The tone can be depressing4. The different tones blended together pretty well5. Teyonah Parris did a good job6. Dave Chappelle steals a scene that he's in7. When the moral messages are on screen, I instantly feel the emotional pain8. The ending is good if not greatNegatives:1. Wesley Snipes, what the fu*k is with that accent (I understand you were trying to be funny, but something just didn't sit well with me)2. The movie could have moved at a faster pace (I felt that some scenes were a bit unnecessary)3. Some of the comedy and the seriousness didn't blend particularly well together during certain scenes4. Jennifer Hudson can not act (they should have gotten a no name)Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. I had fun, I laughed, and I was depressed at times all throughout this movie. This movie has some minor flaws, but I don't care.Finale Grade: B+