A film I somehow missed when it was first released, despite hearing a lot of good talk about it, New Jack City constantly kept being held back from the top of my prioritised viewing list by many other movies. That’s a shame, because this is a great movie, energetic and entertaining throughout, with a nicely stacked cast.
It’s the tale of a drug dealer/crimelord, named Nino (Wesley Snipes), who seems to remain far too many steps ahead of the law. He rose to his position thanks to the introduction of crack cocaine into the drug market. Addicts die, threats die, competitors die, but Nino just keeps on trucking, much to the frustration of a special task force that has been assembled to bring him down. Headed up by Detective Stone (Mario Van Peebles), the two men most likely to get some kind of victory over Nino are Appleton (Ice-T) and Peretti (Judd Nelson). They are willing to do whatever it takes, even helping an addict (Pookie, played by Chris Rock) clean and asking him to do some undercover work for them.
Written by Thomas Lee Wright and Barry Michael Cooper, New Jack City dances beautifully between some moments of realistic violence, some very pertinent points on the changing face of modern crime and those in charge, and pure visceral cinema. All of the characters feel slightly larger than life, but that helps to underline the idea of the way territories have been redrawn and reformed. And there is snappy dialogue throughout that reveals extra information about choices made by the main characters.
The champ of delivering that snappy dialogue is Snipes, who gives what could well be his best ever performance, all confidence and no heart. Having said that, Snipes has so many great performances tucked away in his filmography that it’s tough to pick out a clear favourite. He owns every minute of his screentime here though, and it’s a good job. His character needs that charisma and presence to be at all believable, even while being so enjoyably over the top. Ice-T and Nelson have to bicker at one another in standard “cops who may not like one another, but will look out for one another” mode, and they do well with what they’re given, especially when delivering some more melodramatic moments in the finale. Then there’s Rock, delivering a fantastic performance as an itchy and desperate junkie who is given a big second chance at life. Bill Nunn and Bill Cobbs are as good as ever, Allen Payne does perfectly okay, although he is the weakest of the main players, and there are many others worth keeping an eye out for, from Michael Michele and Vanessa Williams to Russell Wong and Anthony DeSando, as well as Fab 5 Freddy, Flavor Flav, and more.
Although he has a supporting role, Van Peebles also gives himself the much more important job of directing this thing. Helped by the casting, and the soundtrack (this has an amazing soundtrack), he delivers a film that I would easily rank alongside many of the top crime films of the 1990s. It’s arguable that making something more grounded, and grittier, would have been a better approach, but this is a slickly-packaged bit of entertainment that is also a call for change. Van Peebles, with the script he is working from, gives viewers a sugar-coated pill, but you can still easily taste the sour centre.
It may not seem as worthy as a film like Boyz N The Hood (released in the same year), or Menace II Society (which came along a couple of years later), but it is just as deserving of your time, even if it takes a very different approach to the social issues being explored.
9/10
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