For one, the various gunfights and singular car chase are shot and choreographed in an ugly manner. There is a disconnect, though, to how this script plays out and how Director X chooses to stage the action. The moving parts are compelling throughout. There are genuine, tangible stakes to every move Prince makes, as well as the moves that happen around him that are out of his control. Prince is savvy enough to get by, but the people he surrounds himself with prove to be less savvy. Relationships within the business are rocky at best. The stance that Alex Tse’s script seems to take is also 1-to-1 with Gordon Parks Jr.’s film, in that Prince is taking life-threatening risks to get out of a life that is ultimately just as threatening, if not more. The main plot, as it is in the 1972 film, is about Prince taking steps to get out of the broken system that he has already done a good job at gaming in his favor. Even the abusive police characters are introduced late, and they are depicted as too mustache-twirling to be a true mirror of real-world issues of police brutality.
But by and large these things are window dressing to the film’s main plot.
Fake news is name dropped in the same breath as the word “America.” In one instance, the brilliant line “No one’s more gangster than a bank” is said.Īll fine platforms from which to make statements. A confederate memorial statue is destroyed in literally over-blown fashion. This isn’t to say there aren’t nods to current American socio-political issues. The film does not shy away from the sleaze of its exploitation roots, but it does distance itself from the relatively restrained political messaging of its predecessor. Male gazing environments with cash flying in the air and women lazily gyrating. And the rest of the film follows this stylistic template. This sequence is, more or less, a hip-hop music video.
That also likely explains why the plot of the film begins in a highly-active strip club. It makes sense, given the man’s lengthy history as a music video director. Music, in fact, might be the strongest aspect of Director X’s vision of enigmatic Atlanta drug pusher Youngblood Prince (Trevor Jackson). Future curates the original music throughout, which is lush and appealing, if not an impossible comparison to Curtis Mayfield’s scoring of the original film (his “Pusherman,” which is one of the best original songs made for a film, gets reprised in this movie). Not to demean the song that kicks off the film. From moment one of Superfly, the remake of the 1972 blaxploitation film of the same name, there is over-indulgent bombast.