Steve Harris

After all the bickering over the title, Chi-Raq hit the theaters. This film is a traditional “Spike Lee Joint.” His movies, or “Joints,” do not follow the usual routes of character development. The actors frequently break out into entertaining musical numbers and short comedy skits about controversial topics. Spike Lee fans know to brace themselves for possible telephones that might fall out the sky from nowhere, or maybe an occasional upside-down camera shot. None of that happened this time. However, the cinematography does a fine job of capturing the city as the visual backdrop of the story.