New Jack City

I am a criminal justice student. I am not the po-lice. Instead, I academically study the "Why" or "causes" of crime. I am burning the midnight oil tonight writing a paper about how this movie accurately portrayed three arguments of how the criminal justice system acts as an oppressor. First, this movie is about the "Crack" scare which lead to politicians adopting get tough mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. These laws pertaining to Crack Cocaine sentencing have a sentencing disparity: 500 grams Powder Cocaine=5years v. 5 grams Crack Cocaine=5 years. That has been called an example of laws being used "to further racial disparity and sanction racial harms" because people of color are the ones that are primarily arrested for crack cocaine offenses. Secondly, the poor-remember the neighborhood and how Nino and his gang were small timers until they rose to the top. Well, the police focus their arresting attention on the poor.Their crimes are sought after and punishment is imposed while the middle and upper classes crimes are most often ignored. Thirdly, blacks being targeted for drug charge arrests is a way to control what Marx calls the Surplus Population-the people that society doesn't really need.It can also be looked at like this, our criminal justice system is controlled by professional white males and a Nino Brown-one who makes it out of poverty by alternative means is an affront to the system that put the white professional in power because they consider it cheating and they feel that he doesn't have a place at their table because he is black. The Kennedy's and the Rockefeller's back in the day made their money through illegal means-and now they are respectable-what's the difference?

I can't believe I liked this on its original release. I found the film quite dated (crack is the drug of choice), poorly written and edited, and unfortunately poorly acted. Among my issues are: Ice-T as a guy named Scotty Appleton? Why didn't Mario ever tie his tie? Is there one more Mafia stereotype they could have included? Was an editor present, or did they just open the shutter and shoot? And finally, Chris Rock gets the award for worst cold turkey (later recidivist) performance ever (for a character named "Pookie"). He was bad. Redemption is present, however, in Wesley Snipes' performance (his career unfortunately seems to have followed the Treat Williams model), the music, and the design and filming of the crack "warehouse/factory." A "3." See "Do the Right Thing" or "Boyz N the Hood" instead. N.B. Judd Nelson's appearance here brings to mind one of the great questions of the 80s: "What the hell did Andrew Ridgely do in Wham?" Judd is in this film because...?

I don't normally write reviews, but this film annoyed me so much I felt compelled to put some of my opinions forward. Firstly, the script. I really couldn't get over how terrible it was, given the good reviews I'd read before watching the film. Don't get me wrong, I like a brainless, thoughtless actioner as much as anyone, maybe more, but I at least want my action scenes to be strung together with some kind of purpose. Here, stuff just happened. The film would be going in one direction and then, with the flick of a switch, that idea would be abandoned and we'd go after something else. The end in particular suffered from this problem, and left me thinking, "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!" Another massive problem I had was with the acting. I'm sure Ice-T has plenty of fans out there, but I couldn't even put up with how bad his acting was in this. It was just atrocious. I wasn't even able to enjoy it in an amused way, because I really got the impression he thought he was being cool. Judd Nelson as his partner also annoyed me, because he seemed to be in the film for no reason other than to have a white guy in the cast. Most of the time he said and did nothing, and in the one scene where he actually takes part in a conversation, I couldn't help but feel that whatever he was saying was irrelevant. The film did, however, have one saving grace - Wesley Snipes. As bad as everything else was, Snipes was really having fun here, and it shows. Like a black Tony Montana, he chews up every scene he's in, (mostly) overcoming the lame script he has to work with. Sadly though, it's not enough to save what was otherwise a very long 90 minutes. Check it out for Snipes, but don't necessarily expect to come away smiling.

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

I am a criminal justice student. I am not the po-lice. Instead, I academically study the "Why" or "causes" of crime. I am burning the midnight oil tonight writing a paper about how this movie accurately portrayed three arguments of how the criminal justice system acts as an oppressor. First, this movie is about the "Crack" scare which lead to politicians adopting get tough mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. These laws pertaining to Crack Cocaine sentencing have a sentencing disparity: 500 grams Powder Cocaine=5years v. 5 grams Crack Cocaine=5 years. That has been called an example of laws being used "to further racial disparity and sanction racial harms" because people of color are the ones that are primarily arrested for crack cocaine offenses. Secondly, the poor-remember the neighborhood and how Nino and his gang were small timers until they rose to the top. Well, the police focus their arresting attention on the poor.Their crimes are sought after and punishment is imposed while the middle and upper classes crimes are most often ignored. Thirdly, blacks being targeted for drug charge arrests is a way to control what Marx calls the Surplus Population-the people that society doesn't really need.It can also be looked at like this, our criminal justice system is controlled by professional white males and a Nino Brown-one who makes it out of poverty by alternative means is an affront to the system that put the white professional in power because they consider it cheating and they feel that he doesn't have a place at their table because he is black. The Kennedy's and the Rockefeller's back in the day made their money through illegal means-and now they are respectable-what's the difference?

"New Jack City" is probably one of the best films of the early 1990s. Here we have the story of Nino Brown, played powerfully by Wesley Snipes, a drug lord hell-bent on contaminating the community, particularly the African-American community, with crack cocaine. Recruited to stop him are Scotty Applewhite and Nick Perreti, played respectively by Ice-T and Judd Nelson. There is much doubt about these two officers because of their shady pasts. And a big brouhaha occurs when Applewhite recruits a kid named Pookie - played brilliantly by comedian Chris Rock in one of his early roles - a former "runner" (which is street for dealer) turned addict himself. Ice puts Pookie on the road to recovery and sends him in to infiltrate the CMB (Cash Money Brothers), Brown's underworld organization. When things start to go wrong, Applewhite decides to infiltrate the group himself. All in all this is a great movie. I love the producers' use of music throughout the movie as a means of setting the tone for this cinematic war on drugs. Mario Van Peeples does an excellent job of directing and does a pretty good job playing the officer who recruits Applewhite and Perreti. Ice-T is excellent in one of his earliest roles and, thus, has proven to be a good character actor. And the supporting cast is top-notch. Michael Michelle (of "ER" fame) is totally sexy as an early financeer of CMB and an initial love interest of Snipes. I could surely live without Judd Nelson as Nick Perreti though. Throughout the movie he looks like he's trying to be this bad-a** biker cop and comes off as though he's trying to be black, though his response to a comment made by Rock regarding a Marvin Gaye song suggests that maybe he's a bit of a racist. Casting Nelson makes me wonder sometimes "WHAT THE F*** WERE THEY THINKING??? A BRAT-PACKER???" The ending to the movie could be stronger as well as it seems a bit cut-and-paste for my taste. I feel that they could've shown more testimony from more of the different players. However, they do redeem themselves with a violent confrontation between Nino Brown and an elderly World-War II veteran who had been evicted from the apartment building that the CMB now occupied and who had since been hounding him with phrases like (and this is not an exact quote), "Your soul is required for a meeting in Hell, you idolater." I suggest that you look past Judd Nelson's weak acting and the cut-and-paste ending and check this movie out. Sadly, this story still holds true today even if some of the players are different. I give this one 9 of 10.

New Jack City is a pretty standard affair which tackles the drug problem which plagues America's streets, more so during the time that this film is set, that being the late 1980's. It delivers it in such a way that you just know there are some flaws abound yet pin pointing them is a pretty hard thing to do, this is probably why the film seems to have such a love/hate relationship with most people, hence the films mediocre rating of about 'average'. One thing is for sure, and this glares throughout, is the sloppy editing this film has. It's quick, disorientating, dodgy montage editing technique which crops up now and again is a throw back to what poor edit jobs on television programmes were like and now and again, the camera seems to cut away a little too quickly when someone is giving a line of dialogue; this was very frustrating as just a little bit of lingering camera now and again would have made the film a little more atmospheric. At times, it felt a little like a music video given the chorus of song that sometimes some characters burst into. This was another little annoying flaw which cropped up two or three times. This is a shame as the film had rolled along fairly nicely. Another thing was the characters themselves. Everyone just seemed to be a little too 'whiney'. They were all too scared to stand up to everybody else, and this included Snipes' character (The so-called black Tony Montana) who really only agreed and went with the flow throughout. Nobody really seemed to actually take charge of the whole set up and authority was only really drilled home after exactly an hour on the clock when, during a scene involving everyone involved, Nino Brown (Snipes) pierces someone's hand with some sort of hidden ice pick he has built into his cane. This was a shame as a shocking; violent scene like this earlier on in the film would have worked wonders and would have punched home any doubts we might have over Brown not being the man to lead this operation we've been introduced to. I didn't like the construction of some of the scenes, either. This fault is twinned with the bad editing (already mentioned) and one in particular is with the relative ease in which Brown's gang manages to take over a multi storey building. This was early on in the film and this was another chance to stamp some ruthlessness and authority into the film, particularly once again with the character of Nino Brown. The odd execution or anything else the writers could have come up with that Brown maybe would have done would have been most welcome, however instead of good crime film conventions we get sloppy editing with the siege over in a flash as well as a bad hierarchy montage. It's also about as bloodthirsty as an episode of 'Barney the Dinosaur'. This is also a shame as this was a good chance for an action scene of some sort, following on from the good chase scene at the very start of the film. One other thing was the rather forceful and abrupt message at the end which wasn't too well timed given we're not NEARLY given enough time to catch our breath from the films climax. A pause, some better music and then the title would have done. What's the rush? Apart from these things, the acting from the police characters; including the internal feud between two of them and the whole involvement of a rehabilitated character joining in was good and was used well to create some suspense in the film, most notably the drug factory scene, even if his behaviour WAS a little unprofessional. I can see why this spring boarded Snipes' career as there are some things going for it but I couldn't give it a second watch so soon after the first and not everyone will like this film but if you go into it knowing of these few flaws I've talked about, it could be a very entertaining crime drama.

Anyone who has seen gangster movies from the 30's or later films such as "Scarface" will immediately recognize that they've seen this tired old plot over and over and over again. At the time it came out, attempts were made to herald it as groundbreaking, but that was merely pure hype. There are only two ways the film was any different than many older gangster movies: 1) the gangsters aren't Italians, Irishmen, or Cuban, instead they are black, and 2) instead of being criminal gang members with speakeasies during Prohibition, they have a crack house. Big deal! Changing these two things are minor variations in the story and NOT groundbreaking film-making. Avoid this regurgitated derivative garbage like the plague.

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.

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs New Jack City is The Untouchables for the black community right down to the last tee.Wesley Snipes is playing Robert De Niro's part as Al Capone,while Mario Van Peebles is the Elliot Ness of the story,making for a black man's Kevin Costner (what a concept).As the director of the film as well,Peebles has also updated it to the more modern time of 1986.And the film he has crafted is an impressive tale of the futility of anti-drug initiatives in the US,gang violence,dealer rivalry and hypocrisy. Peebles' direction is stylish,if a little uneven,and the film has a cool visual style to it,with catchy camera angles and a few enjoyable viserical shots,kind of ahead of it's time in the pre-Matrix days of 1991.This is matched by a cool,absorbing hip-hop/R'nB soundtrack that plays through a lot of the scenes in the film,adding a believable feel to the black crime scene that is being portrayed.There is,of course,a heavy amount of violence and bad language in the film,so any extreme prudes should probably steer clear,but this is ultimately necessary to convey the reality at the heart of the story,and not in any way immensely gratuitous. On the performances front,Snipes is ideally cast as the cool-as-ice gangster crimelord,practically playing him in his sleep,while fine support comes from Peebles,Ice-T and Judd Nelson as the men in charge of bringing him down.A good few years before he started over-working his flamboyant funnyman act,another surprisingly great,and non-funny performance comes from Chris Rock as a young junkie desperate to kick the habit and help the cops stop Snipes and his drug dealing operations. It's similarity to and feel of being a remake of The Untouchables for black people ultimately does underwhelm it somewhat,but it is still nevertheless a fairly brilliant film that is distinctly aimed at the problem it is targeting and is very distinctly 1991.****