Superfly, the 1970’s blackploitation film, has been remade by Sony. It basically has a rap video director, who has made a two hour long gangster rap video out of the funky soul classic. It is pretty entertaining at first. The main character is flamboyant, with a wacky hairdo that gets the chicks. This brotha would rather have two average looking babes with him, chicks with big asses and pear shaped figures. They aren’t really super hot though, since the really hot ones would fight over each other too much, instead of getting in the shower with him. He has one latina and one black girl. That part of the movie was original. But he is selling drugs, and doesn’t have any really good motivation, not even love. It is also hard to root for the main character, since he betrays his mentor, who introduced him to the drug racketeering game. He steals his mentor’s connects, then lies about things, resulting in his mentor getting whacked. There is a rival (drug dealing) gang that wears only white and has all white cars. A lot of real rappers seem to have been cast in the film as braindead thugs and sidekicks. The Superfly dude has a kinda ok martial arts training scene with his mentor, but it is just ok , not amazing like a Tony Jaa scene (for instance). As the movie continues, stay prepared for some plot twists, but all the while you wonder: who cares about all these drug dealing thugs? And the women in the movie aren’t that hot. The music isn’t that good. The acting , for the most part, isn’t that good.
In short, this movie is a microcosm of a soulless culture. People doing drugs for no reason – not even seeming to be having much fun! They are doing drugs , not to go on a spiritual journey, or to help provoke some new great musical inspiration. No one seems to have any passion for anything but dealing drugs and getting money. And none of the characters seem to be happy. So why are they doing what they do? From watching this film, it seems like a lot of the gangster behavior is simply meant to fill a role or stereotype. These people are overly image conscious. As is our modern society. Modern society is too often a soulless fight for economic survival. People project false images in order to network and stay empowered, rather than on merit. These are all corroding factors as urban society decays all around us. Movies like this wrongly praise the decay, and fail to question it. Therefor, what does the outcome of the movie even matter? Drugs and street crime are an inevitability. Are they really that interesting.
A main character in a film such as this needs a better background story explaining his motivation for crime, or else it needs to frame the main character as a bad guy.