"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…

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.…

You could imagine during production that Abel Ferrara must have felt that his stylized neon saturated gangster film, complete with his biggest budget thus far, may prove to be his most mainstream and accessible feature, harking back as it did to the similar celluloid criminal mayhem that James Cagney would feature in in earlier days.

But upon its release in 1990, critics and audiences alike didn't see it that way at all. They gave it a resounding thumbs down, whilst some even booed the cast at screenings and demanded the profit went to drug rehab programmes in the titular city. Such reactions only further served the notoriety of Ferrara as an enfant terrible of American indie cinema scene. And so…

Pretty typical mob story where Walken plays a guy who wants to be a Capote/Escobar type that uses his ruthlessness to control the crime world and in terms dreams to use his power and influence to do good for neglected communities--or that's what he tells himself. It is so typically by-the-numbers on paper that I had a few moments of wondering why they even bothered making this, or if it was worth my time watching it. But, like any script that's pretty standard-fare the solution is to go balls-to-the-wall in execution. Apparently people consider this movie to be "shocking". Sure, heads get shotgunned but it's a lot of spray-and-pray gang shootouts which is super high energy and crazy and kind…