The new "Shaft" is an improvement that also represents a decrease. Whatever that might now look like (the term is already meaningless), it's not a "blaxploitation" film. It's more like a crudely traditional, amusingly junky badass action comedy made for the megaplex. However, given that the movie shares its title with both the fun-in-a-violent-forgettable 2000 John Singleton remake and the audacity - or maybe it's just blatant huckster savvy - of the 1971 Gordon Parks original, you might be wondering: What is this, exactly? A continuation that doubles as a reboot yet keeps the same cast?

Additionally, it is a film about a father and son coming together because the main protagonists are JJ Shaft, a son that his father abandoned 30 years ago, and John Shaft, a down-and-out private dick (in every sense).

JJ, who was raised by his mother and is a respectable millennial with an MIT degree, works as a data analyst for the FBI in New York. Not that the contest is fair. In his capacity as a desk-jockey hacker, JJ is portrayed as a smart but overbearing lawman who is so responsible that he is fundamentally diminished in masculinity.

Enter Samuel L. Jackson as Shaft, a pleasure-loving Dirty Harry of Harlem who follows his own set of laws because he is so ingrained in his street ways that he has become a lethal relic. Due to all of this, "Shaft," despite being undoubtedly conventional and even frivolous, is a movie that is just in time to appear nearly topical.