Chi-Raq Movie Review

Chi-Raq (2015)

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Written by: Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee (written by), Aristophanes (play)
Directed by: Spike Lee
Starring: Nick Cannon, Teyonah Parris, Wesley Snipes, John Cusack, Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson
Rated: R
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Plot
Based on an Aristophanes play and set in modern day Chicago, Lysistrata unites women worldwide to end the violence by committing to temporary celibacy.

Verdict
Chi-Raq often feels like a stage play or musical due to the sing song delivery of rhyming lines, contrasting with the over the top but wholly serious performances. It explores systemic issues that contribute to violence, but the tone of the film often overshadows the message. Women unite and abstain from sex until their men agree to end the violence. It's an absurd situation. Despite tending to be more absurd than enlightening, I enjoyed it.
Watch it.

Review
Nick Cannon is rapper Chi-raq. It's difficult to disassociate Cannon from his previous roles, but he did a good job in this. Snipes was over the top and Jackson felt like just a box to tick.
Jackson's role was to deliver exposition, but it never felt necessary, instead slowing the pace.
The rhyming couplets throughout the movie can be distracting and often feel forced. Some of the rhyming words don't actual rhyme. The dialog is sometimes clever, but often bad too.

Chi-Raq - It explores serious issues, overshadowed by a campy setting.

It's based on a play, but the style takes away from the message. It's a great concept of transposing the play to modern day Chi-Raq and gang violence. Lysistrata devises a plan to stop gang violence after a stray bullet kills a child. She creates a worldwide movement, but it's hard to find that kind of solidarity believable because someone always relents. In Chi-Raq, you just have to accept it. The scale and scope of Lysistrata's plan is comical exaggeration which obscures the severity of the issues the movie is trying investigate.

The government's plan to stop the strikes is called "Hot and Bothered." I think the comical moments are going to cause people to remember this as comedic exaggeration and miss what this movie is trying to do, at least what I think it's trying to do. Cusack delivers an impassioned speech about the systemic and community issues. What allows for death and destruction in the community?

Lysistrata organizes the women, but her role as powerful is derived from treating women as sex objects. Her power is withholding sex. While it's become more prominent with how many movies treat female characters as nothing more than a sex companion for the male lead, it seems weird this movie blatantly ignores that issue. It's female characters are one note, but then so are the male characters.