leftbanker-1

I'd rate this as better than OK. I could have done without the personal sides to the two principal cops. For one, I just don't care. Two, they went way overboard on drama for both of them.

Plenty of action, at times like WAY too much, but I get it. You need to keep viewers tuned in. But from all the action, Long Beach, California, looks worse than the Gaza Strip and a lot more dangerous.

The short episodes help as they don't have a lot of time to go too far into the land of Boring Personal Problems.

The acting was decent so whatever issues I may have with the show, it wasn't the acting. I was just hoping they could have dealt a little more with those being protected and served by the police. From the very outset, there was total animosity between the cops and the civilians.

Things I didn't like. I didn't like that I didn't like anyone. There was no one to root for. I didn't like the ending, not even a little and I liked everyone even less.

...because I think I may have popped myself when I saw this years ago at the cinema, and I was twenty years out of diapers (I was 30. Do the math). Just watching the trailer now in 2025 scared the wits out of me. This film is a horror-science fiction masterpiece.

I also remember how hot Sigourney Weaver was in this, especially in her scene when she undresses. She also plays a powerful and brave woman, a lot braver than I could ever be.

The scenes on the planet were creepy as can be. Then when the alien introduces itself in such a spectacular fashion, the theater explode with screams, no joke. The rest was a haunted house story, but it held me spellbound.

Like many other phoenixes raised from the ashes of former hits, this had little reason to be called Shaft, except for brand recognition and marketing, the only things most films care about. Unfortunately, in their list of priorities, writing isn't even to be found, or at least it's buried in some sub-category near the bottom.

So, it has the name and the theme music by Isaac Hayes, and just for good measure, they sort of plagiarize the music from the TV series SWAT.

Movie writing at its most basic when all you need is to throw in a sufficient number of car and foot chases, shootouts, beatings, hot babes, trash talking, and homicides and stretch them from start to finish and voilà, you have a movie. All the stuff in between is superfluous and of little importance.

Lots of racial and ethnic stereotyping in this, enough so that I doubt it would muster in 2025.