Shaft
New Line Cinema | Release Date: June 14, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
40
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
20
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)John SemleyJun 13, 2019
In its neediness to be liked, the new Shaft – the third of five films in the series to be titled, simply, Shaft – says everything and nothing. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshJun 12, 2019
Cool New York City detective John Shaft is back again in, you guessed it, Shaft, with a modern update that goes completely sideways in all the wrong ways. This Shaft is a bad mother all right, and it'd be better if he just shut his mouth. Read full review
35
IGNWilliam BibbianiJun 12, 2019
Tim Story takes a classic movie franchise and drains it of all the action, sex and topicality that made it worth revisiting in the first place. Jackson, Roundtree and Usher have star power to spare but they’re asked to perform embarrassing and ignorant comedy routines, and the action is so unremarkable that the movie can’t even rely on that spectacle to compensate. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineKeith WatsonJun 14, 2019
Ultimately, the only truly retro thing about this weirdly reactionary potboiler is its politics. Read full review
20
The GuardianBenjamin LeeJun 18, 2019
Even outside of the script’s aggressively repetitive bigotry, the shambolic Scooby Doo plot struggles to grab even the slightest amount of attention. Read full review
12
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonJun 14, 2019
The plot is completely forgettable and Story’s direction is atrocious here. He can’t balance the numerous attempts at unfunny comedy with the sudden outbursts of extreme gunplay. The action sequences lack any sense of excitement and only once do the stars of comedy and action align. Read full review
10
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJun 15, 2019
It’s so aggressively puerile and phallocentric (big swinging dicks, big guns) it could be taken as a parody of a puerile, phallocentric action comedy — a hotfoot to feminists and girly-men. That’s a distinction without a difference, though, since either way it stinks to heaven. Read full review
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