David Farnor | On 04, Nov 2016

Amazon’s Chi-Raq has finally got a UK release date. Spike Lee’s stirring, stunning musical is the first original movie produced by Amazon.

A modern adaptation of the Greek play Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, Chi-Raq stars Teyonah Paris as Lysistrata, who leads a group of women in protest against the ongoing violence in Chicago’s Southside – a movement that “challenges the nature of race, sex and violence in America and around the world”.

Their strategy? Deny the men access to them until the fools put down the guns.

“Welcome to Chi-Raq, land of pain, misery and strife,” declares Samuel L. Jackson’s narrator in the film. The topic is certainly pertinent: while filming in Chicago from the start of June to early July, Lee says that 331 people in the city were wounded and 65 murdered.

“The result is a satire that feels like it’s been written by stitching together news headlines from the last two years, but if it sounds heavy-going, you’re forgetting who you’re dealing with,” we wrote in our review of the film, which premiered in the UK at the London Film Festival.

“Spike Lee is on ferocious form, weaving passionate calls for sanity with laugh-out-loud jokes… Witty, funny and unwilling to give a fudge about cinematic convention, Chi-Raq’s on-the-nose rallying cry is a punch to your gut.”

Also starring Nick Cannon, Wesley Snipes, Jennifer Hudson, Angela Bassett and John Cusack, the film will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 2nd December 2016 by Vertigo. It joins a number of Amazon originals that have been released by other distributors in the UK, from Studiocanal releasing Manchester by the Sea to eOne releasing Elvis & Nixon.

The movie will also be available to watch online on the same day as it hits cinemas, with Chi-Raq released on VOD platforms including Curzon Home Cinema and TalkTalk TV Store.

Read on for the trailer and poster:

 

 

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