New Jack City

Van Peebles directs a great cast in this detached-from-reality film about a truly evil drug-lord with a head for business and murder (Snipes), and a tough, street-wise pair of cops (Ice-T and Judd Nelson) hell-bent on bringing him down. The message is an important one - slogans are not going to win the war on drugs, and the way the message is carried in the film is more subtle than you might expect. The end of the film makes the point very clear, and I won't discuss it because I do not write spoilers. Like many of the more intelligent films made in the early 1990s, New Jack City is also an indictment of the euphoria of the Reagan years - telling the true story of what that time was like for those living from paycheck to paycheck, or trying to live without one, and dealing with the invisible "war on drugs" which had little to no effect on anybody in our inner-city neighborhoods.

Snipes, Ice-T, Allen Payne and Chris Rock give stand-out performances, and the rest of the cast provide excellent support. The film also stars New York City, and definitely has an NYC flavor (seasoned with more than a pinch of Hollywood). The cinematography is a little breathless - not unusual for the genre but in this case a bit extreme. The script is good, but perhaps too dense with rich plot details. And the editing provides a few pacing problems toward the middle of the film which, combined with the over-abundance of subplots, detract from the development of the main themes. The soundtrack is excellent - including a nice mix of hip-hop, rap, contemporary soul, and dance music - all blended nicely with the imagery of the film. Van Peebles style is well developed in this film, but I felt that some aspects of the plot were a little too outrageous for the seriousness of the film's message, and I fear that the message may have been lost on many of the film's viewers.

Overall, this is a good film. Entertaining and thoughtful, but definitely not for everybody.

Nice thriller stars Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes), he is an up-and-coming drug pusher. His brother and right-hand-man, Gee Money (Allen Payne) introduces Nino to a new drug: freebased "crack" cocaine . Ruthless Nino Brown lords it over a New York neighbourhood with an empire built on crack and violence. He and Gee and Duh Man (Bill Nunn) go about getting cooperation through violence and coercion, while they take the poor neighborhoods of New York by storm. The crime lord ascends to power and becomes megalomaniacal while a maverick police team vows to stop him. Detective Stone (Mario Van Peebles) wants to bring Nino to justice, but no one on the police force is crazy enough to go against Nino. Stone decides to call in Scotty Appleton (Ice-T), a plain clothes cop who is currently serving a suspension for shooting an unarmed suspect who ran during a failed drug deal. Scotty is a disenchanted streetwise African-American officer of the law who's convinced by Stone to infiltrate Nino's organization, with the help of another burned-out cop, Nick Paretti (Judd Nelson). It was a time that there was a new gangster in.........They're a new breed of gangster !. The new public enemy !. The new family of crime !. Where survival depends on friends, trust and power... !An organized crime family out to run this city is up against cops who knows its streets !.

New Jack City (1991) is presented with punch and precision, being efficiently shot. This is a very violent, but crisp and cleanly made narcotics thriller. Just say no ghetto-melodrama but an action movie with thrills, intrigue, shoot'em up, suspenseful, and lots of violence. Depicting a slight study of drug proliferation, violent gangs and its effects on poor neighborhoods. The film pays lip service to social analysis while delighting paraphernalia of action and violence. As such, it's a superior example of what used to be called blaxploitation, with Mario Van Peebles piling on corruption and carnage for all he's worth. Powerful acting for the always versatil Wesley Snipes as wealthy Harlem drug lord sought by rebels cops Ice-T, Mario Van Peebles and Judd Nelson. Fine playing all around otherwise, los of action and strong dialogue you can hear, other familiar secondary actors include the following: Chris Rock, Michael Michele, Bill Nunn, Russell Wong, Bill Cobbs, Christopher Williams, Vanessa Williams, Tracy Camilla Johns, Nick Ashford, Thalmus Rasulala, John Aprea and several others.

It contains an adequate musical score fitting to enviroment from Michael Colombier and songs from Johnny Hill, 2 Live crew, Ice-T and others. Likewise, an atmospheric and evocative cinematography by Francis Kenny. Nicely put together in an old fashioned style by Mario Van Peebles who also plays one of his features roles. Mario is son of director Melvin Van Peebles and German actress Maria Marx. He's a known actor and filmmaker. His movie debut came when he was 12 in his father's 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Mario has his own movie production company named "MVP Filmz". He has directed a number of films, both, TV and cinema , such as: ¨Armed, Superstition, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, Renegades, Road to redemption, We the party, Boss, All Things Fall Apart, Panther, Wiseguys, Hard Luck, Love kills¨, among others. New Jack City(1991) rating: 6.5/10. Nothing new here but incisively made.

This movie was a surprise. I remember Mario van Peeble's father's "Watermelon Man", an amusing comedy that turns anti-white about half-way through and winds up rather a racist tract. It's almost a convention in movies about African-Americans who seem destructive to themselves or others that they are turned on to dope by white guys. Or, if they retain their rectitude, it's the white guys that are at the head of the horde of local pushers. Of course white women flock to the heroes, etc. We've seen it hundreds of times. But this one is different. The majority of performers are African-Americans, both the cops and the bad guys, neither of them perfect in their goodness or their evil. The characters seem to choose their own destinies for a change. Wesley Snipes is not given a loving trophy blonde. There is a token white cop, Judd Nelson, who was my supporting player in "From the Hip," an extraordinarily good film itself, who is permitted to say, "It's not a black thing. It's not a white thing." Crack is the problem here, not race. We're all in this together, which, in these days, is a pretty progressive statement. It's strictly a genre film. There is craftsmanship in it, if no noticeable attempt at depth, but it's well and stylishly done too. Van Peebles knows how to place the camera and when to cut. The performances are excellent for a film of this type. Snipes especially is a fine physical actor. It winds up with the expected shootout in an empty warehouse or factory. I'd kind of put off seeing this on TV, afraid of wincing through the prejudices I anticipated being expressed, and I was pleasantly surprised to find them completely absent here.

New Jack City is one brutal ad uncompromising look at the drug scene in New York in the Reagan-Bush era. It's seen thriough the eyes of Wesley Snipes who rules Harlem for a while and through the team of narcotics detectives who are given the task of taking him diwn,

Snipes is mesmerizing in his evil. He sees himself as a Reagan era entrepreneur and is pretty ruthless about stamping out competition. He even goes to war with Mafia don John Aprea and each takes significant losses.

As for the team that goes after Snipes they are a diverse lot consisting of director Mario Van Peebles, Ice-T, Judd Nelson and Russell Wong. Each brings a skill set to the eam.

Two supporting cast members really stand out. One is Chris Rock a eather luckless junkie informer planted in Snipes organization. The other is Vanessa Williams one deadly ht woman who works for Snipes.

Almost 40 years later New Jack City is still a powerful film. And sadly the drug problem remains.

As British TV is so bad at the moment I'm re-watching many of my DVDs. I dug this out. Wesley Snipes is a very underrated actor just like his peer Laurence Fishburne. He is excellent in this, and as another user has commented, you see especially in the trial scene that his character isn't quite the dumb-head he appears to be just misguided. It has a fine cast. I dug the film out to watch Judd Nelson's performance again in it as I've just re-watched the Breakfast Club and wanted to compare. I can't remember who directed NJC but it's very reminiscent of a Spike Lee film and just as hard hitting. It is just as relevant today as it was back in 1991 in fact more relevant here in Manchester, United Kingdom as we have seen over the past 7 years some serious divisions within the black community.