Yet a subsequent article, detailing the creative clashes that went on behind the scenes of The Corner , an HBO miniseries, felt as cramped and inconclusive as its highly paid, hamstrung protagonists. We don't look to summer movies for big statements about race. Scored to the sound of car crashes and ray gun blasts, summer movies are usually as disposable as popcorn. Trying to be all things to all people, black and white and Latino, these movies often turn out to be more provocative than their creators intend. Like reports from the front, they're tuned in to the cultural moods of the moment, the daily divides that the Times tried to capture in its series.
Coherent arguments are beside the point.
Instead, you find a grab bag of conflicting ideas, a pacifying political prize at the bottom of everyone's Cracker Jack box, no matter what the viewer's race or gender. Check out a multiplex in July. J ohn Singleton's remake of Shaft can never have the cultural impact of Gordon Parks's 1971 original, which immortalized Richard Roundtree's suave private-eye hero and helped to usher in the film genre known as blaxploitation. The earlier movie's opening credits set the stage. With that unforgettable Isaac Hayes title song percolating in the background, Shaft saunters through Manhattan like he owns the place.