1990 Directed by Abel Ferrara
A former drug lord returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition and distribute the profits of his operations to New York's poor and lower classes in this stylish and ultra violent modern twist on Robin Hood.
Christopher Walken David Caruso Laurence Fishburne Victor Argo Wesley Snipes Janet Julian Joey Chin Giancarlo Esposito Paul Calderon Steve Buscemi Theresa Randle Leonard L. Thomas Roger Guenveur Smith Carrie Nygren Ernest Abuba Ariane Harold Perrineau Gerard Murphy Vanessa Angel Frank Aquilino David Batiste Michael Battin Frankie Cee Lia Chang Endira Erica Gimpel Frank Gio Jack Goode Jr. Lance Guecia Show All…
Le Roi de New-York
"I thought people like me were the legal system."
One of the seminal films of the 1990's...almost perfect as a stylistic exercise yet concurrently filled with such political commitment that it's simply overwhelming. Everything Ferrara hates is in this movie, including it's form which he criticizes in the commentary. "This is so uptight I can't even breathe. I'm glad I made this film because I would never make a film like this again. This is fascistic filmmaking." He's partially right, the film is incredibly tight, so tight that nearly every shot, every cut, every object has a specific purpose and function. It's some of the most "perfect" mis-en-scene I've ever witnessed, even down to the sheen on the wineglasses near…
Never sacrifices thrills or atmosphere or style, never skips one opportunity for digression, never misses any chance to shock, doesn't sell short a single member of its incredibly stacked cast of future stars -- not to mention Walken's absolutely towering performance -- and still has time for a stinging critique of white capital's exploitation of black labor. It's weird that I don't watch this like four times a year.
a cops vs. gangsters movie with a deceptively complicated moral lens about systems of ostensible righteousness connected to systems of violent force. the contradiction of philanthropy built on exploitation; the redistribution of blood money. probably walken's finest performance (particularly his sudden transitions from charm to dead-eyed wielding of power) and ferrara's fullest stylistic expression of his brute nihilism. "build a brand new day, dream on."
90
This movie seems to exist in those precious minutes right before the sun rises at dawn. As if the night will never cease, and there is no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel. Such a nocturnal vibe that I adore.
City of the living dead.
Frank gets out of jail and descends over the city. A new vampire (Ferrara gives the game away by actually score a deal to a screening of Nosferatu), very remote yet emotional, all cool seduction, violence and capital filtered through a good game. Does Frank means anything of what he says? That's the film's mystery and one might add that how new Frank is presented as a philantropist entrepneur is Ferrara's largest provocation. He certainly means it when he describe himself as "not the problem, but a businessman" everything else comes from that. His opposite numbers, uptight Victor Argo, hothead David Caruso have lost long before they started, it is Frank's world after all and…
There were mass walk-outs during this movie’s world premiere at the New York Film Festival. I guess those people couldn’t handle this much Cinema.
Abel Ferrara's best looking film. It's a film of dualities.
The photography captures the contrasts of the decadence of elite Manhattanite dwellings to the filth of the streets. Ferrara's direction teases out the similarities between the two vastly different settings. Then he paints both worlds with a thick coat of sleaze and corruption.
Scenes are filled with well dressed men who suddenly explode into violence, their blood a fresh color on the grim tapestry of the city. The cops who are willing to bend and break the law. The crooks who clean up the streets by force. By the time it ends the moral lines have blurred.
Walken looks skeletal, ghostly. His face is gaunt and plastered with subtle expression.…
"nobody rides for free, motherfucker.”
Ferrara’s most classically formal masterpiece does just as much to fit into the mainstream as it does to illustrate just how boldly the director diverges from all but the most daring of his ostensible peers. The politics of the film, of a white kingpin bossing around mostly Black and Latino underlings while enjoying entry into the rarefied, extremely white upper crust of society based on a shared exploitation of the lower rungs, are clear without ever being clumsily insisted upon. Numerous scenes show the ways that both Frank’s underlings and even just Black people in the orbit of service work in rich areas always occupy a lower status without Ferrara ever resorting to so much as a pointed insert shot…
Name a more badass gangsta scene than the King of New York sequence where Frank White visits the police funeral in a limo, rolls down the window next to Caruso and goes "Hey you".
