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Pretty Good

A Major Disappointment

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This movie is unlike any other gangster movie that I have ever seen and is arguably one of the best of all time, and it's very hard to believe that this is a directorial debut and it is also one of the best debuts I've ever seen. The movie chronicles the career of a gangster named Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) who is a very ruthless gangster who will do anything necessary to make money even if it's illegal with the help of his trusted cohorts Gee Money (Allen Payne) and Kareem Akbar (Christopher Williams). Brown is also under investigation by detectives Scottie Appleton (Ice-T) and Detective Stone (Mario Van Peebles, who also directed this movie) who also have an informant named Pookie (Chris Rock). It is funny to me but prior to watching this movie I never thought of ever seeing Wesley Snipes as a gangster, and Chris Rock in a dramatic role altogether but in their cases their performances exceeded my own expectations, but Ice-T i'm used to playing as a cop because of his work on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit". Everything in this movie is nearly flawless, but there was one minor problem that I had which was that the songs about "New Jack City" go on and on and can get pretty annoying after a while of hearing them but everything else including the Wesley Snipes performance, and the visionary direction of Mario Van Peebles struck the right chords in telling a story set in the suburbs of New York City, telling a pure and realistic message about what drugs can do to people on the streets and how harmful they can be, which is a reason why more people should watch this movie to learn about the harmful effects of drug addiction. This is one of the 10 best and most memorable movies of 1991.

New Jack City is directed by Mario Van Peebles (who also co-stars) and written by Thomas Lee Wright and Barry Michael Cooper. It stars Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Judd Nelson, Allen Payne, Chris Rock, Bill Nunn, Bill Cobbs and Michael Michele. Music is by Vassal Benford and Michael Colombier and cinematography by Francis Kenny. New York City, 1986 and crack cocaine is the drug of choice and Nino Brown (Snipes) and his gang, the Cash Money Brothers, are building a violent empire and cornering the market. Enter streetwise cop Scotty Appleton (Ice-T) and loose cannon Nick Peretti (Nelson), who form an uneasy partnership willing to push the law's boundaries to bring Nino down… The Black Scarface! On narrative terms it's basically an urban modernisation of the Scarface story, the themes at work were nothing new back then, never mind in cinema post 1991. That it is predominantly an African American film caused many at the time to call it a Blaxploitation picture for the 90s set, which is unfair, because it has more on offer than that and doesn't shy away from the dramatics available with such a story. True, it isn't pulling up any trees or breaking new ground in the drug/crime order of cinema, but it's incendiary enough to be thrilling whilst never romanticising the lifestyle of the drug gang. It paints a stark world of a drug infested city populated by colourful gang members, hapless addicts and edgy coppers, all sound tracked by pulse pounding hip-hop beats. This was Van Peebles' first big screen directing outing and it's a hugely impressive debut. So much so it begs the question on why his subsequent directing career has been something of a none event? Here he delves deep into the realm of neo-noir to provide the picture with many visual smarts and techniques. Backgrounds are often showing oblique angles, colour schemes such as garish greens feature in striking compositions, a flashing red light is used adroitly on a character's face as he struggles to hold his rage, a POV shot of a basketball and the opening of the film with a slow zoom in on a crime about to be committed on a bridge, these are just some of the flair tricks showcased by Peebles. While some of the key characters that form Nino's gang are under developed, Peebles does garner a great performance out of Snipes and very good turns from Ice-T and Nelson. Snipes provides Brown with a sinister swagger, yet a charm exudes from him that makes it believable that people would be willing to be led by him. Ice and Nelson are a cool double act, both Scotty and Nick pulse with machismo but are equally flawed as characters. The other important character and performance is Pookie played by Rock, a reformed crack addict now helping the police. Peebles is unsubtle in his handling of the Pookie situation, but it strikes the requisite emotional chord and puts further dramatic worth into an already tense filled thriller. It's not as revolutionary as was once heralded, there is some formula familiarity and the finale is telegraphed too easily, but this has energy and style to burn. Making it one of the leading lights of the drug crime sub-genre of neo-noir. It's a damn shame Peebles was never this good again. 8/10

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.

At the beginning of the 1990's during the emergence of a new African-American Hip-Hop and Gangster Rap culture, the film world was hot on its heels as fresh talents emerged. Audiences were witnessing an upheaval of social politics and being informed of the stark realities Hollywood filmmakers had so far avoided. Directors such as Spike Lee, John Singleton and Albert & Allen Hughes introduced the world to the American ghettos with outstanding moral dramas such as 'Boyz N The Hood', 'Do The Right Thing' and 'Menace II Society'.Notably there were also veteran movie directors who seemed keen to capitalise on the gritty urban realism that Hollywood seemed to have shied away from since the crime dramas of the '70's. Abel Ferrara's exploitation flicks 'Bad Lieutenant' and 'King Of New York' reintroduced art-house audiences to the mean streets and ghettos of the Big Apple and even Walter Hill's Baltimore-based 'Trespass', a white man vs. black crime syndicate crime thriller made a nightmarish caricature of the Hood.Standing firmly in between reality and fantasy was Mario Van Peebles' 'New Jack City', which for its pains has been met with divided opinion ever since its release in 1991. Approaching the subject of wealth, guns and drugs cultures' effects on East Coast America from the standpoint of historic cinema works such as Scarface and The Untouchables, 'New Jack' tells the tale of a swaggering petty crook's rise from the streets to infamy by exploiting the poor people on the streets and getting them hooked on the newest, most addictive and dangerous drug available.Taking a beating as crime is on a steady rise, Stone and Park are put on the case with the intentions of bringing down the practically untouchable Nino Brown and their best chance is through Scotty Appleton, who has been chasing Brown for a long time already. Put on the streets with mismatched gun-toting basket-case detective Nick Peretti, it seems that the black cop/white cop alliance could be doomed from the start as racial tensions are clear to see.As the cops fail miserably in their attempts to bring down the street-level drug pusher Kingpin, Brown's life goes from promising to priceless as not even the mafia seem able to touch him but soon betrayal within the ranks seems evident and eventually his own American Dream begins to deteriorate, giving the cops a chance to catch him off guard.Yes, 'New Jack City' does hint sometimes heavily at other classic gangster films but it doesn't steal plot and by no means is this an exploitation film. Mario Van Peebles, previously an actor and director for television, not only captured the bleak and dying New York in the days when Hell's Kitchen and Wall Street were addicted to the same class-A drugs, he provided a wisdom and intellect that became increasingly rare in crime dramas beyond that point, even in his own movies.'New Jack City' is a hip film with contrasts between the bleakness of reality and the colour of the times, richly textured with some of the best soundtracks of the era. It boasts a cast that has achieved great status in the '80's and then some that have gone on to varying levels of greatness. Wesley Snipes, Mario Van Peebles, Ice T, Judd Nelson, Bill Nunn, Bill Cobbs and a young Chris Rock make for a crime drama with admirable range. The only problem with some viewers being that it sometimes feels more like a television drama than an actual movie, but that has never bothered me since 'New Jack' delivers on so many levels, providing chills with both drama and action.I'd recommend this film if you've a fan of Wesley Snipes as the villain, which he's done successfully on numerous occasions because he steals the show so often with his fine performance of the egotistical and cocky Nino Brown. But more so if you just want to add to your collection of classic urban crime thrillers because this is nothing short of just that!