SuperFly's reviews
Media reviews
The Guardian
'SuperFly' is never more satisfying than when behaving like a series of music videos that exalt in the beauty of slow motion, whether of jiggling thong-clad buttocks or the Michael Mann-styled high-frame-rate action sequences. Extravagance acts as its own currency in the stunt-or-be-stunted-upon culture Youngblood vows to fight his way out of, and [Director] X fits right in with his penchant for overflowing aesthetic opulence. The joy of X is often simple and immediate ? the leather trenchcoat/turtleneck ensemble, the seat-rattling bass of the 808-on-steroids score.
The Wrap
Helmed by music video visionary Director X (making his feature debut) and written by Alex Tse ('Watchmen'), 'SuperFly' is a delightful surprise: funny, brutal, stylish, and thoughtful. It updates the blaxploitation genre with wit and resonance: police brutality is an inescapable scourge in Priest?s Atlanta, and our hero dispatches one of his enemies while toppling over a Confederate statue.
Vanity Fair
What?s intriguing, and occasionally even thrilling, about Director X?s movie is that it?s also as unabashedly cheesy as the original. Its lapses into political territory aren?t an excuse to adapt a serious tone, but rather a chance to morph into a crime fantasy in which the black protagonist will prevail.
Indiewire
It works because the characters keep things anchored to some kind of dramatic reality. More famous for his music videos (e.g. Drake?s 'Hotline Bling') than his previous narrative features (which include 2015?s 'Across the Line', a solid drama about the struggles of a black hockey player), Director X impresses by letting his cast take the wheel. The film has its flair ? the night exteriors are rendered with a high frame-rate blur that channels Michael Mann, the action set-pieces are well-staged for such a run-and-gun production (even if Snow Patrol look kinda silly dressed up like the ski troops from 'Inception'), and an extended three-way in Priest?s shower is shot like a scene out of '300' ? but 'SuperFly' puts its people first.
USA Today
Led by a swaggering Trevor Jackson -brandishing silky Morris Day hair, deadly karate kicks and flashy wardrobe changes- the urban crime drama contains cheesy dialogue, one noteworthy threesome, multiple scenes of raining Benjamins and haphazard plot transitions aplenty. However, instead of 'Superfly' being deep-sixed by these flaws, they contribute to the film?s self-aware, guilty-pleasure vibe.
Roger Ebert
'SuperFly' works best when it?s attempting to bring elements of the original film up to date. Director X and Tse accomplish this with some very amusing in-jokes and timely commentary (...). They also give the film?s women more agency and far more power in this version, with the film?s biggest badass getting the ?walk toward the camera after the carnage? shot normally reserved for male heroes.
Entertainment Weekly
'Superfly' fetishizes gun violence, greed, and girls as shimmying, snitching, half-naked playthings. It?s unlikely to ever appear in the same sentence as ?Time?s Up movement? (apart from this one). It also wants to be to Atlanta what Brian De Palma?s Scarface was to Miami: a baroque, blinged-out underbelly travelogue decked out in Versace and violence. What gives the movie its few surprises, though, are a handful of scene-stealing supporting performances.
The A.V. Club
Jackson?s uninspiring performance only serves to highlight the film?s other weaknesses, like the corny aphorisms that pepper its dialogue and the much-hyped soundtrack by Future?which is serviceable, if generic enough that Curtis Mayfield?s iconic compositions are brought back to give a little extra oomph to critical scenes.
Variety
Most drug dramas are set in New York or L.A. (at this point, a dated cinematic reflex), but what matters is forging a vivid sense of place. The Atlanta locale of 'SuperFly' seems like the perfect high-low setting, but though Director X exploits a number of colorful locations (a hair salon that turns into a drive-by slaughter, a mansion that looks as big as Versailles), the film has very little visual texture or sense of place. It treats Atlanta the way all those thrillers of the ?90s treated Toronto, as a big gleaming anonymous generi-city. We get almost no sense of the dailiness of Priest?s existence.
New York Times
Given human nature, the alliances and affinities are almost always short term, of course. Which isn?t to say that the film lacks for racial consciousness. 'SuperFly' saves its most righteous physical violence for its finale, and it?s a sequence that will probably enrage anyone who?s ever uttered the phrase "Blue Lives Matter". The entire denouement has a nice satirical sting.
Time
It?s admittedly somewhat misleading to compare the 1972 'Super Fly' with its 21st-century counterpart: The two movies don?t serve different audiences, they serve different worlds. 'Super Fly' was a low-budget exploitation film aimed at?though not exclusively enjoyed by?an underserved black audience. What gives it lasting power is its livewire undercurrent of desperation. The new version is a slick, big-studio picture, emerging into a world where racial inequality has perhaps shifted forms, but has in no way eased.
The Washington Post
The new film is a decent example of the barrage of reboots storming theaters lately, but that?s all it is: decent. What it really wants is to be a bit more than it should be, or is. As Priest warned us, that rarely results in success.
Rolling Stone
Nothing about this trendy, tarted-up 'Superfly' feels lived in or authentic. Look, it?s not like the original was any great shakes as a movie. But in trying to update blaxploitation for millennials who never asked for it and then spin the result into a pathetic, substance-deprived gloss on Brian De Palma?s coke epic 'Scarface', 'Superfly' gets lost in ambitions it has no idea in hell how to execute. What a mess.
The Hollywood Reporter
A lack of style would be no problem if the film breathed life into its tired glitz-gangsta tropes. But it drags its feet through the motions, hobbled in part by Jackson's failure to convince us that Priest is as smart as he thinks he is. Four decades from now, he may look less laughable than Ron O'Neal's original Priest, with his upholstery trench coats and regrettable hair. But that's assuming anyone 40 years from now will even know this flick existed.