New Jack City: A Gangue Brutal

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.

20 years after his father, Melvin Van Peebles, had made a revolutionary film called Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song, Mario Van Peebles would direct something of a classic himself with New Jack City. He plays the superior officer of a detective played by rapper Ice-T who we find out has personal reasons for wanting the drug dealer Nino Brown, played by Wesley Snipes, dead. Assisting him is partner Judd Nelson and a former user played by Chris Rock before he joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live". While Rock is better known as a comedian, he gives a fine dramatic performance here. Of course, it's Snipes who gets the lion's share of the acting highlights especially when his character's on trial. While it seems initially the drug lifestyle is glamorous here, it does show eventually that crime doesn't pay. So on that note, New Jack City gets a high recommendation from me. P.S. While I managed to watch this on YouTube, some parts were missing so I checked the Italian upload on the site to watch what I missed and I managed to understand what was going on despite the Italian dubbing.

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.

In one of the greatest patriarchal roles since Brando's in The Godfather, Wesley Snipes astounds and overwhelms as "the godfather" in this film, directed and co-starring Mario Van Peebles. Snipes, however is where the strength of the film lies. His drug lord has no remorse. No heart. No soul. All he has is his power and he wants more of it. The film has a quick pace. The cast is quite good, including Ice-T as a cop going on the inside to try and take down Snipes' drug lord. Judd Nelson is dark and sardonic as Ice-T's main opposition on the case.

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.