Let's play Hollywood producer for just a minute. Imagine you're the person in charge of recasting the role of Shaft for the 21st century. You need to find someone to play the right combination of funny, tough, and endlessly suave. Who do you cast? If you said literally anyone other than Samuel L. Jackson then you deserve a roundhouse kick to the head courtesy of the original Shaft, Richard Roundtree. The 2000 version of Shaft is a lot better than people remember, with Jackson playing a heightened version of himself for the film. (But that's okay, because the dude literally is Shaft.) Though the plot gets a little convoluted when it comes to who Jackson is playing - he's the nephew of the original Shaft, also named John Shaft - the payoff comes when Roundtree shows up to help his nephew with an investigation. It's old badass aligning with young badass and, for a few brief moments, all is right with the world. Unfortunately, another reboot is scheduled to begin by the end of 2015 without Jackson's involvement, so perhaps Roundtree wasn't holding the torch correctly when he passed it off.
