'Chiraq' is one maddening Spike Lee movie

Chi-raq

There's a very funny, interesting movie somewhere in Chiraq. But it gets buried underneath Spike Lee's increasingly exhausting indulgences, which is a real shame. This is not the comeback movie some critics are hailing it as. It's certainly a solid step up from the dregs of Miracle at St. Anna, Oldboy, Red Hook Summer and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, a series of disasters that has really shaken my confidence in Lee's future as a filmmaker.

At its best Chiraq brings back some of the humor and vibrancy that has been missing from Lee's work in the last decade or so. He has a luminous and charismatic leading lady in Teyonnah Parris which is complimented by some very nice work from Wesley Snipes, Samuel L. Jackson and Dave Chappelle in what is little more than a cameo role. And it has an appealingly outrageous plot -- the women of Chicago go on a sex strike to induce the men to put down their weapons.

The film has its heart in the right place and makes some prescient points about a topic I am incredibly passionate about -- the proliferation of guns and gun violence in this country. Unfortunately, Lee doesn't seem able to make up his mind about what kind of movie he wanted to make.

So what you wind up with is what feels like a very good first draft of a movie, one that gets bogged down (literally) with sermonizing, some truly awful stunt casting -- Nick Cannon does NOT have the gravitas for this kind of film -- and a narrative that swings wildly from over-the-top absurdity to awkward stabs and gritty realism.

Take for instance Jennifer Hudson's role in the film. She draws on her real life tragedy to give a very raw and emotional performance as a grieving mother whose young child in struck down by a stray bullet, but what is she doing in a movie with comic dance numbers and a scene where a racist military drill sergeant mounts a canon in Confederate flag undies?

I admire the audaciousness of this movie but too many scenes had me scratching my head or rolling my eyes. Why does Lee seem so hellbent on objectifying women in his films? Why does he drown out interesting scenes with his R&B flavored soundtrack? Why does he insist on staging awkwardly uncomfortable sex scenes that are just painful to watch?

And yet, Chiraq is certainly never boring. Perhaps Lee has just decided to abandon commercial and accessible filmmaking for good. There is something rebellious about this movie, particularly it's willingness to name names and point fingers.

Still, it will persuade no one who isn't already vehemently on the side of gun control. There is not a single shred of this film that is any way neutral, and when John Cusack appears on-screen as a well-meaning anti-gun pastor the film feels almost amateurish in its desire to beat us over the head with its message of love trumps hate.

Of course, like all Lee's films, it looks great, and has some very striking sequences but this one, for me, feels like a real missed opportunity. I'm not sure, beyond Lee himself and his more diehard fans, who this film is really supposed to appeal to. I'm still a fan to the degree that I'll see everything he does, but Chiraq missed the mark in my opinion.