An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Spike Lee, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, from all the movies I have seen from this director, it might be the least accessible one. Eventually, it was only when Lafayette Hightower’s wife introduced herself as ‘Ganja’ and since the main character was called ‘Hess’ that I connected the dots and remembered that this movie was actually a remake of ‘Ganja & Hess’ (the funny thing was that I have actually never seen this cult-classic). Apparently, this remake was really faithful not only with the story and the dialogues but even with some specific shots which were virtually identical making the actual value of this project even more dubious. Anyway, the end-result was a rather trashy black vampire flick with some exploitative undertone combined with a rather pretentious artsy-fartsy vibe and, well, this mix was rather difficult to digest, that’s for sure. At least, I really loved the intro with this beautiful hip-hop dancer, it was really soothing, and there was also a nice church band at some point but everything else was either rather bewildering or, in the worst case scenario, rather boring to behold. Concerning the cast, except for Rami Malek who did have some fun with a small role, the rest of the cast was filled with some rather unknown actors who did struggle to make this material either entertaining or interesting. Since it was a remake of some obscure blacksploitation flick, there were obviously many lovely ladies involved in all states of nudity and I have to admit that Zaraah Abrahams who played Ganja was so charismatic. I would love to see her in something else but I was surprised when I found out that she worked mostly in some British TV-shows and soap-operas such as ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘EastEnders’. Anyway, to conclude, it’s probably the most obscure movie delivered by Spike Lee so far and, to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s really worth a look, except maybe if you are a die-hard fan of this director.