I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I bought
New Jack City on DVD, a moive that I remember fondly from when it came out back when I was in high school (1991).
I've watched the movie once since I bought it, and I can freely admit that it isn't a
good film, but it certainly is an interesting film. So I'm going to take a little bit, rewatch it, and jot down a few thoughts. I'm not sure whether this will end up as a single blog entry or a few, but it'll certainly be rambling.
First up, the trailer...this is going to be the last embedded clip that isn't
. Consider yourself warned.
And now to the movie, itself.
From the first strains of the soundtrack, you can tell that this is a film with a message. This isn't a standard urban gangster, throw-away film. We get a flyover of Manhattan, heading to a black man holding a white, three-piece-suit-wearing over the edge of a bridge, threatening to drop him. Throughout the course of the flyover, the soundtrack plays an early-90's rap over the the
O'Jay's "For the Love of Money", one of the all-time great bass lines. Radio clips play over the music, informing us that there are too many poor in the country, that there are wealthy preying upon those less fortunate, that the poor are addicted to drugs.
If there was a better way to scream "heavy-handed, message movie coming" as a warning, Mario Van Peebles didn't know it at this point in his filmmaking career.
...
And out of a limo steps Wesley Snipes, resplendent in a head-to-toe, royal blue suit with a gold medallion the size of a bread plate on his chain. Snipes tells the upside down business man that "money talks, bull---- runs the marathon, " letting us know that he's a hip cat, someone who knows the old cliches but turns them on their ear with his own style.
Down goes the white man into the river.
And back to the radio voiceover:
The number of addicted infants born in Manhattan-area hospitals has risen steadily over the past few years. Hospital officials say that the care required by these, the smallest victims of the cocaine epidemic, has severly impacted the available resources allocated for pediatric care.
And, just in case you missed that this movie was going to be heavy, we pan down a mural painted on a building. The mural is a simple, single biblical quote:
Don't be decieved
Neither fornicators - nor
Idolaters nor adulterers...
Nor abusers of themselves
With mankind nor
Thieves nor drunkards
Nor revelers nor
Extortioners
Shall inherit the
Kingdom of God
1 Corinthians 6:10
No foreshadowing there, no heavy-handed pushing of the message.
I have absolutely no proof of it but I'm thinking that all of the radio voiceover was recorded for the movie rather than actually recorded off of the radio. There's no way that Van Peebles (the director, in case I hadn't mentioned) found radio quotes this on point to his message.
...
And b'dam...Ice T, the main man himself in all his pre-
Law and Order glory, eventually headed to the small screen but here acting for only the third professional (IMDB-listed, anyway) gig - after
Fame, Breakin', and
Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (and those had been seven and eight years before
NJC). This is the hard man, himself, and the casting of a member of NWA had to be a risk for a Hollywood studio.
Respect, Mario, respect.
Plus, Ice is paired up against a very young Chris Rock. Impressive talent.
...
The camera circles our two actors as they talk through a drug deal, continually tiled at about a ten degree angle, reminding us that this film is not only heavy but edgy, too. We focus on Ice T's black, knit rastafarian hat, his gold chains, his black Adidas Raiders track suit, the Adidas shelltoes, the gigantic gold rings, the back-to-Africa t-shirt. Hell, I'm half expecting a Run DMC video to break out at any time.
...
The chase is on as Rock robs Ice T and the deal goes sour. Our camera switches to overhead, back to a close up, then into another edgy tilt-ten-left-then-rotate-to-ten-right angle as Ice T hurdles down the stairs after Rock and the movie's theme, "New Jack Hustler" by Ice T, himself, plays over the chase.
Suddenly the previously dry streets are wet, and Chris Rock is jumping a fence onto a playground where Ice T shoots him in the heel, bringing him down but spilling the drug deal money into the wind, bringing people from all over.
...
I swear that one person - when he runs over for the money - says "He's kicking his monkey a--".
I'm not making that quote up.
...
Three times we flash back to a well-dressed, black man watching the shooting scene unfold. I wonder if he'll be an important character later on. Maybe if they'd flash back to his stunned face a couple more times, I might have an idea that he was somehow important.
...
We're on a new basketball court with a dozen young black men. The lead is in a velour track suit with a four-inch dollar sign gold medallion. His leather
Kangol hat is turned backwards, of course. The others all have bucket hats and Adidas non-velour track suits. His left hand has a dollar-sign ring spanning at least three of his fingers.
Seriously, did Run DMC have a hand in producing this film?
Velour-track-suit makes bets and shoots a twenty-footer for all the money. It took me five watchings, the final one slowed down to a crawl, to tell whether he made the shot or not. The rim doesn't have a new, so it's almost impossible to tell that he swished the shot. Sure, he acts like he made it and collects his winnings, but the actual shot might as well have been missed for the way it looks on screen.
...
We spin right - again, camera tilted ten degrees - to see Wesley Snipes in a Jeep Wrangler, brick-sized cell phone to his ear, the business-man-dropping guy driving. Velour hops in the back, spanning at least fifty feet in the blink of an eye.
...
Montage of the city storefronts...
...
Wesley Snipes is different. His Kangol is turned
sideways.
Take that, convention.
Take that, white man.
Take that, Charlie Murphy.
There's a new Darkness in town.
...
And of course Flava Flav is in the movie with a giant clock necklace.
How could he not be?
...
And the rap he's doing samples heavily from the
Inspector Gadget theme.
Because it's the 90s.
...
Wesley Snipes drinks Dom Perignon straight from the bottle...with a straw.
Because it's the 90s.
...
We're twelve minutes into the film.
...
Ah, our first chance for a direct soliloquy.
Snipes: Because you got to rob to get rich in the Reagen era.
They running a strange program, y'all. I mean mo' po' and disenfranchised folks than this place has ever seen. And see they try to put this s--- off and act like it don't exist.
Velour: Meanwhile, the rich get richer...
Black businessman from earlier scene: ...and the poor don't get a f---ing thing.
Snipes: Times like these, people want to get high...real high and real fast, and this is gonna do it.
(focus in on vial of freebasing cocaine, crack)
...
I think this movie was originally written as a television series proposal.
After Snipes gives his preachings, he lays out the plan: take over The Carter (an apartment building) and turn it into a drug, making, distributing, using Mecca. This plotline eventually wraps up in about thirty or forty minutes, and the movie switches to a different storyline with the same characters, the kind of thing that would have happened with a one-hour, television drama.
Sure the language would have to have been cleaned up drastically (
NJC is all about the
). Maybe this plotline would actually have worked better as the first season story arc. In the movie the takeover of the Carter is about to take like five minutes via montage, but the consolidation of the Carter would be a number of episodes and have a lot more drama involved.
...
Velour is now wearing a tailored suit and killing people in broad daylight on the sidewalk.
...
We get our first visit from the
wise old black man who appears at various times throughout the film to decry the actions of Wesley Snipes's Nino Brown character. Here he only looks on disapprovingly as Snipes holds a shotgun to the head of a naked man who is being divested of his control of the Carter's operations.
...
Time for the 'consolidating power montage' with a capella, doo wop "For the Love of Money" being sung by a quintet of black kids on the street corner. The lyrics "don't let money change it" and "all mighty dollar" are emphasized this time.
I'm thinking that "For the Love of Money" could have worked really well as a recurring leitmotif in the
NJC television series, sort of the way "Way Down in the Hole" was for
The Wire.
...
The gang - Snipes and Velour's gang - is now wearing custom-made clothes. They're sort of a letterman's jacket with leather sleeves and knit main in all black with red, glitter CMB on the back and on the front lapel.
Nothing says 'serious movie' like henchmen dressed alike.
...
Is Wesley Snipes really The Joker?
...
Oh, and some of them have CMB shaved into their afros, too.
Because it's the 90s.
...
Snipes is now wearing a white suit with black t-shirt underneath.
I'm thinking I couldn't pull that off without looking like a moronic Sonny Crockett.
...
And it's winter by the time the montage ends, and there are only three singers in the group. Apparently it's the group Levert, which makes sense because I would have sworn it was one of the O'Jays standing around the burning trash can at the end of the montage. (According to
this, one of the O'Jays was a father to two members of Levert.)
...
It's 1989 now. I know because the screen said
1989 at the bottom. No reason for subtlety at this point.
I think the movie said 1986 at the beginning.
Ice T is leaning against a chain link fence outside a playground (probably not the same one as earlier, but maybe), and we zoom in to see a kid pick up a cheap soccer ball from a puddle. The puddle is filled with disposable vials, the same kind that we just saw the CMB (Cash Money Brotherhood) filling with crack in the Carter during the montage.
Seriously, subtlety has no place in this movie.
...
Wise black man is back, and we're on to season two of the series.
He's yelling at a clearly out-of-touch policeman saying that "[He] wants to know how drug pushers could take over an entire apartment building right under your noses."
Wise black man isn't really part of the story at this point. He's just window dressing so Mario Van Peebles (director and now actor, back since
Sweet, Sweetback's Bada----- Song) can push past him as the harried police detective who 'gets it' and is willing to fight the drug pushers the right way, the only way they know how. Thankfully Detective Gets It has an Asian assistant detective who can help him out.
Detective Gets It puts down photos of his two choices for officers who will work on his soon-to-be-successful task force: Ice T and Judd Nelson.
Seriously...Judd Nelson.
"These two are trouble," says the Police Commissioner. He might as well have yelled that they're both "loose cannons."
...
Soliloquy #2
Police Commissioner: You and I both know the system wasn't ready for this kind of epidemic. Crack came on the scene and spread like wildfire.
But now I got the Mayor...and the governor on my back. I need some results...Fast!
You get me Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes). Forget Paretti (Nelson) and Appleton (Ice T), the risk's too high.
Van Peebles: With all due respect sir, I mean you still don't get it. You're talking about a war out there that we're losing, and you're not gonna give me what I need to win.
Now I need some cops who know these streets. I need some New Jack cops to take down a New Jack gangster.
...
A motorcycle pulls up. The kickstand kicks down. The jeans are rolled up but not pegged. The hobnail boots are worn heavily at the toe. The laces aren't tied.
Hell, it's John Frickin' Bender.
I swear that Judd Nelson walked into this movie wearing the same boots that he last had on as John Bender in
The Breakfast Club. Are we supposed to believe that Nick Paretti is some kind of grown-up John Bender?
We'll see in our next installment of Pardon our ramblings:
New Jack City...
. Be careful with those couple of songs.
