SuperFly is a remake of a 1972 blaxploitation movie also called Super Fly. Super Fly (1972) is one of the more well known films in the genre and has gained a cult following over the years. As a film completist I made sure to watch Super Fly (1972) and I also tried to watch it’s sequels Super Fly T.N.T. (1973) and The Return of Superfly (1990). Unfortunately Super Fly T.N.T. was not a big hit and to my knowledge never even received a DVD release. I found a VHS option for it on Amazon for a $100 and although I’m a film completist, I’m not a psycho and I’m not made of money. The Return of Superfly (1990) was luckily available on Amazon Prime streaming and although it had some cool ideas it was overall a weak sequel compared to the original. Going into this remake I was afraid it would have similar results.
Superfly is about a drug dealer named Youngblood Priest (Trevor Jackson). Priest is wealthy and successful from the drug trade but one night he starts to rethink his career after almost getting shot in the head by a member of a gang called the Snow Patrol. To get out of the dangerous life of being a criminal Priest tries to go to his mentor and drug connection Scatter (Michael K. Williams) and ask for more drug inventory to make enough money to get out of the life for good. When that doesn’t go as planned Priest has to use his natural street smarts to go over Scatter’s head and get what he wants.
Trevor Jackson plays the lead and I wasn’t familiar with his work. After watching the movie I found out why and realized he is only 21 years old. I was very surprised by that considering he fit the role of the older 25 to 30 something years old Priest Youngblood really well. He came off as relaxed and as confident as actor Ron O’Neal who originally played the character in the 1972 version. Overall the cast of this movie was pretty solid including Jason Mitchell as Eddie, Priest’s business partner. Mitchell had a breakout role a few years ago playing Eazy-E in the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton (2015).
Superfly was directed by Julien Christian Lutz, better known as Director X. Lutz only has one other small feature length movie to his name and has made a successful career as a music video director in hip hop. A lot of this movie has elements of X’s music video style and some people may look down on that but I think it added a lot of unique visuals. A lot of music video directors have gone on to become great directors in the movie industry and I wouldn’t call Director X a great director just based off Superfly but I do think he has some serious potential.
Most of the soundtrack within the movie was provided by rapper Future who was also one of the producers on the movie. As a hip hop fan who grew up in the ’90s and 2000s I’m much more into New York ’90s based boom bap style of hip hop while Future does a much more modern style. Despite that though I actually thought his songs fit really well with Director X’s vision of this movie and wasn’t bothered by it at all.
A few problems with the movie show up when you realize there are quite a few antogonists that Priest has to contend with. Maybe the idea was to make his character look surrounded by multiple threats but if that is the case then that idea could have been presented a little better. The movie also wraps up a bit too easily by the end and although the third act has some cool ideas they are just a bit too similar to ideas we have seen several times in other movies.
Some people are going to write this movie off and call it a surface level remake of the gritty original. I can’t completely disagree with that stance but I could argue that the gritty nature of the original had more to do with it’s small budget. It’s obvious that the filmmakers of this remake did not set out to create a gritty low budget movie. Saying that though I think the filmmakers did show a lot of respect to the original by following generally the same plot yet doing it in a bigger and more modern way which is impressive considering the movie’s reported budget was only $16 million. This movie isn’t going to win any Oscars but it is a slightly above average fun crime movie and not a minute went by where I didn’t at least have a good time watching it.
Dave’s Rating- ★★★½(3½) out of ★★★★★(5)
