Jackson as a Greek chorus who strolls through the film in natty three-piece suits, "Chi-Raq" segues to a club and a rap number filled with violent imagery, followed by a shootout that leaves two dead. Is this really the actress who played Dawn Chambers, Don Draper's African-American secretary on "Mad Men," who kept most of her thoughts and private life to herself? After an introduction from Samuel L. "Chi-Raq" is also the nickname of a rap star, played by Nick Cannon, who happens to be the boyfriend of a bombshell by the name of Lysistrata, played by Teyonah Parris, with all cylinders blasting, swinging her hips and button-holing the camera. The title is a combination of Chicago and Iraq, that is, a war zone. With "Chi-Raq," Spike Lee rekindles the flames of Aristophanes's antiwar satire in verse, "Lysistrata." He shifts the battlefield from distant Troy to the streets of Chicago, where young black males kill young black males, although the fallen include bystanders, some children. A change in emphasis or setting, and they bloom anew, as suited to our times as the first day they were staged. Film critic David Edelstein has a review.ĭAVID EDELSTEIN, BYLINE: The great classic plays aren't dead plays. Lee's version is set in the present on the South Side of Chicago. Spike Lee's new movie, "Chi-Raq," is an adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy "Lysistrata." The female title character, whose name means army disbander, convinces the women of Greece to withhold sex as a way to get their men to stop fighting the Peloponnesian War.
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