When an eleven-year-old girl is killed in the crossfire of a shootout between rival gangs the Trojans and Spartans, Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), girlfriend to Spartan leader Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon), rallies her sisters to withhold all sexual favours until a cessation of hostilities is observed. Taking the bones of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata, and its anti-war female-led sex strike, Spike Lee fashions a bracingly current and cinematically exuberant cri de coeur against black-on-black violence in Southside Chicago, an area that has seen more deaths in recent years than the Afghan and Iraq wars combined. The film playfully honours its theatrical roots with one-man Greek Chorus Dolmedes (Samuel L. Jackson) punctuating the action with delightfully effusive commentary.

Notes by David O Mahony