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Superfly - Review

As a genre, Blaxploitation never really left cinema screens. Over the years it morphed and changed into a different breed of crime drama starring black actors and created by black filmmakers. It has been harder to find films in the original spirit of the genre, despite a remake of Shaft in 2000 and a couple of Blaxploitation parodies in 2002’s Undercover Brother and 2009’s Black Dynamite. It seems at this moment, however, that Blaxploitation is at last ready for a comeback. With a Shaft sequel movie for Netflix in the works, we now get a remake of one of the most famous Blaxploitation movies, Superfly. Much like the genre it comes from, the film takes the racial anxieties of the current times and injects them into the crime genre.
 
Youngblood Priest (Trevor Jackson – CAA|Management 360) is one of the coolest drug kingpins in Atlanta. He dresses cool; he has two girlfriends – art gallery owner Georgia (Lex Scott Davis – ICM|Luber Roklin) and waitress Cynthia (Andrea Londo – Gersh|Rough Diamond Entertainment). Unlike others in the drug trade, Priest has gotten to the top by keeping a low profile, not using violence if he can avoid it, and relying on his wits and will to keep his empire afloat. But Priest is disillusioned with the life of a drug kingpin and longs to get out. He sees an opportunity for one last score by selling a ton of cocaine and then leaving. But in order to do that he was to make a run around his mentor and supplier, Scatter (Michael K. Williams – WME|Silver Lining Entertainment), going straight to the cartels. Meanwhile, Juju (Kaalan Walker – ICM), a twitchy member of the gang The Snow Patrol, wants to take down Priest for a slight against his honor, and will use any excuse to do so. Everything is further complicated as a pair of dirty/racist cops played by Jennifer Morrison (CAA|Anonymous Content) and Brian F. Durkin (People Store) want in on Priest’s operation. With all this going on, Priest’s goal of getting out of the drug trade is looking EXTREMELY unlikely …
 
Superfly has just too much going on. Alex Tse’s (CAA|Lighthouse Management) script spends a good chunk of its time getting all these disparate plates spinning, as different factions in Atlanta with competing agendas are introduced and explored. The upshot is that film slows to crawl in the middle, and just when you think the film is starting to head towards its endgame another subplot is introduced. The film is further complicated by the way Priest is written – he can basically talk his way out of any situation, and when everything starts closing in on him, the stakes are never raised in a way that you’re not certain he’s going to prevail. And while it was interesting to see Priest have a fairly progressive polyamorous relationship, but I’m pretty sure the only reason the relationship exists is for a GRATUITOUS ménage-a-trois sex scene in the shower. However, it’d be weird if there wasn’t a gratuitous sex scene in a Blaxploitation film.
 
Performances are what you’d expect in this sort of thing, but Trevor Jackson carries the film as the, uh, superfly Priest. The other standout is Jennifer Morrison, who is clearly enjoying being a villain.
 
Director Julian Christian Luts, aka Director X. (Gersh|The Characters Talent Agency), gives the film a noir color palette that’s always interesting to look even when the movie’s story is just characters scheming and planning. Particularly fun is the montage (set to Curtis Mayfield’s original Pusher Man”) showing how Priest and co. deliver drugs all throughout the country. As is typical with movies like this, the adverse effects of the drug trade are never explored. The action scenes are shot in a chaotic style, but not so chaotic that you have no idea where everyone is in relation to one another.  
 
All in all, Superfly is a bit of a mixed bag, but worth seeing. It just needed to be a LITTLE less complicated.
 
Two and a half out of Four Stars.