Gire: Spike Lee's 'Chi-Raq' a powerful, poetic drama

To find a movie this incendiary, volatile, messy, blunt and urgent, you'd have to go back to "Do the Right Thing," Spike Lee's 1989 seminal race drama that frightened a Cannes film critic so much, she predicted riots would break out all over America if it were to be released.

That's nothing compared to the social destruction and anarchy that Lee's "Chi-Raq" threatens to unleash when it opens this weekend: women exercising their ultimate power by withholding sexual favors from young Chicago men until they wake up, grow up and stop killing each other and innocent bystanders - many of them children - caught in the crossfire of uncaring bullets.

Lee and co-writer Kevin Willmott (he gave us "CSA: The Confederate States of America") have created a brooding and bawdy, yet hopeful, musical twist to Aristophanes' ancient Greek play "Lysistrata," named for a savvy heroine who leads a sex strike against husbands and lovers until they stop killing each other in never-ending conflicts.

"THIS IS AN EMERGENCY" flashes on the screen during the movie's bullet-point opening, a report that Chicago street shootings have killed more citizens than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have killed American special forces.

"Chi-Raq" isn't just a pejorative mashup of the Windy City's name and Iraq. It's the nickname of Demetrius Dupree (Nick Cannon in a bold break from his nice-guy rep), leader of the purple-preferring Spartans street gang. His lover is Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris, discovered by Lee in "Dear White People").

The Spartans battle the Trojans, led by the one-eyed Cyclops (Wesley Snipes). They love orange more than Crush.

"Chi-Raq" begins with a shootout in a nightclub, but the plot cranks up with the accidental shooting death of an 11-year-old daughter of Englewood woman Irene (Jennifer Hudson, whose own mother, brother and nephew were killed by bullets in Chicago in 2008).

Witnessing Irene's anguish, Lysistrata womans-up and, with guidance from a wise neighbor, Miss Helen (Angela Bassett), she not only persuades the Spartan women to shut off the nookie, she gains support from the Trojan woman, equally fed up with the violence propagated by their menfolk.

Marching to the slogan "No peace, no piece," the women take over a local U.S. armory, drawing in all women to solemnly swear to "deny all rights of access or entrance" in a chant too randy to fully report in a family newspaper.

The best, most telling dialogue - all delivered in stylized, rhyming rap-sody - also flirts with vulgarity.

Here's a safer dialogue sample from a Spartan woman explaining things to her Trojan sister: "Everybody here got a man, bangin' and slangin' - fighting for the flag - riskin' that long zipper to a cadaver bag!"

Subtlety and consistency have never ranked high on Spike Lee's How-To-Do list. Parts of "Chi-Raq" venture into sheer silliness, especially a screechy scene in which a racist Army officer (a fully charged David Patrick Kelly) gets sexually humiliated by a Lysistratian cohort.

This scene, and a surrealistic womano-a-mano winner-take-all public sex contest, can't ding the raw passion and railing anger Lee pumps into every line, every character and every scene.

John Cusack demonstrates a never-before-seen sense of outrage as activist Englewood priest Father Mike Corridan, a fiery character modeled after Chicago's own militant Father Michael Pfleger.

Samuel L. Jackson tops this tribute to Aristophanes with a verbally demanding, audience commanding, Spike-Lee-branding performance as Dolmedes, a one-man Greek chorus swaddled in Crayon-colored three-piece suits.

"Chi-Raq" clearly doesn't say that Chicago's violence problems, or any major city's violence problems, can be solved or mitigated by an ancient sex strike.

Lee doesn't pretend to possess the answers.

But at least he's asking the hard questions, and putting them out there in a pop-culture form that engages us, moves us and motivates us to face facts and fear.

Here, Jackson's Dolmedes doesn't ask what's in our wallets. He asks us: What's in our hearts?

Then Lee, like an ancient harbinger of doom and destruction, warns us all to "Wake up!"

Before it's too late.

“Chi-Raq”

★ ★ ★ ½

Starring: Nick Cannon, Wesley Snipes, Teyonah Parris, Jennifer Hudson, John Cusack, Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by: Spike Lee

Other: A Roadside Attractions release. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, sexual situations and violence. 124 minutes