Brash, sexy, satirical and deeply flawed, Spike Lee’s latest picture is an updated spin on Aristophanes’s play Lysistrata. The classical Greek comedy is relocated to a Chicago nicknamed Chi-Raq for its gang violence, gun crime and ever-increasing body count. Teyonah Parris makes a forceful impression as the girlfriend of a gang leader. She starts a peace movement among women, persuading them to withhold sex until the men stop fighting and start negotiating. It’s a neat idea, delivered with a fly swagger. But this overlong picture is already repetitive and unfocused by the second act; by the third, it has made its point a thousand times over.
