Messy and nauseating.

| Feb 9, 2021

Everything about Chi-Raq exudes exuberance: the movement of the camera; the West Side Story-style choreography of the two rival factions; the delight the actors display in tearing into their dialogue.

| Aug 9, 2018

This is no mere thought experiment. Can satire stop a bullet? Likely not. But it can provoke those of us who haven't, and can.

| Aug 9, 2017

It's a mess. But it makes an impression. Chi-Raq has the force of topical-art inevitability. If it didn't exist, you feel, someone would have had to invent it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 27, 2016

This overlong picture is already repetitive and unfocused by the second act; by the third, it has made its point a thousand times over.

| Dec 4, 2016

Astonishing. Up there with Lee's very best.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 2, 2016

Spike Lee's latest is an extraordinary confection: a satire written in verse, set to rap, gospel and hip-hop music, based on an Ancient Greek play moved to Chi-Raq, a nickname for present-day Chicago.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 2, 2016

[Chi-Raq], if often muddled, is rarely dull.

| Dec 1, 2016

A gorgeous, gorgeous thing that proves anger sometimes has the best tunes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2016

A Molotov cocktail of laughs and anger, Chi-Raq is a powerful state of a nation address. The result is the most creatively exciting Lee has been in a decade.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2016

In its lesser moments, though, the film plays like a bad student revue.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 30, 2016

There are huge swaths of 'Chi-Raq' that don't work at all, and they ultimately don't matter a lick, because the picture charges ahead with such confidence and electricity.

| Apr 30, 2016

Chi-Raq is raucous and transgressive, but most of all, it's a lament. And lament is exactly what we-you and I-need to learn: right now, this year, this month, this week, today.

| Apr 13, 2016

Lee returns to engaging, enraged form with Chi-Raq, combining social commentary, anger, humour, dramatics and over-the-top style in a sometimes messy mix that uses every trick necessary to put a spotlight on America's poisonous love affair with guns.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2016

Lee's film is worth seeing for its bombastic excess and camo-clad dance scenes. But if you're looking for tactful visual responses to the Black Lives Matter movement and the effects of police brutality, this isn't it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2016

Never subtle, always strident and absolutely necessary.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 17, 2016

There is no story, beyond this simplest stand-off set up, no character development, no sign of any other life.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 21, 2016

It's messy in places, as Lee's movies tend to be. But there isn't a moment that Chi-Raq isn't alive. This is a deeply serious, biting picture that also has joy in its heart.

| Dec 10, 2015

It's both outrageous and full of outrage, offering up cold hard facts about how the government has continued to ignore and disenfranchise urban communities... and lots of cock-teases in daisy dukes.

| Dec 8, 2015

You long for "Chi-Raq" to succeed. Sad to report, it's an awkward affair, stringing out its tearful scenes of mourning, and going wildly astray with its lurches into farce.

| Dec 7, 2015