WATCHING IT AGAIN (IN ENGLISH): The King Of New York
I watched the ultraviolence and drug-taking entralled. And not able to understand a damned thing: I watched in German.
This time, in an effort to get away from all things virus-related, I decided to watch Christopher Walken as drug lord Frank White, who is released from jail to find out that all his cocaine business has been taken by other people.
His mission is to wipe out the competition and give the proceeds to a poor hospital. We don't know if this is entirely magnanimous, or he's doing it for himself ("I want to be Mayor of New York.....he thinks I'm joking". Anyway, he's trying to raise $16 million for a hospital that's been cut because of budget cuts.
His crew is the much-dancing Jimmy (Larry Fishburne) as well as Test Tube (Steve Buscemi in not a tiny (HINT: HE TESTS COCAINE)) as well as his motley crew of degenerates.
Anyway, on his mission, he's pursued by the police corps of Victor Argo, David Caruso and Wesley Snipes who punch and kick him yet he's released at speed every time.
Like any good drug lord, he's got everyone in his payment: Cops, judges and of course, a band of merry men.
Abel Ferrara - who made this and 'Bad Leiutenant' a year apart - manages to paint New York City in a beautiful blue hew, but such is the dark filming, you're really squinting to find anything of much other detail.
The plot is pretty easy to work out, and the script is so utterly cliched that it's funny. No-one has a lot of redeeming features, ensuring that you understand that it's not only the bad guys who are pieces of garbage. In fact, there's an underlying argument that Frank's decision to wipe out his competition is actually good for the City, bearing in mind what total scumbags they are.
WHAT'S GREAT
Walken: After seeing this, I'm convinced that Walken IS the King of New York. He's got the type of firepower and crazy people to run this town. He'd definitely top my list - ahead of those Scorcese mafiosos or Wesley Snipes' crew in New Jack City. He makes up for the collective foibles of everyone else.
The line of the movie: "You think ambushing me in some nightclub's gonna stop what makes people take drugs? This country spends $100 billion a year on getting high, and it's not because of me. All that time I was wasting in jail, it just got worse. I'm not your problem. I'm just a businessman (if it's $150 billion now, apparently), then the estimate seems a little high in 1990, but hey, that's the movie)).
The action scenes: We love the fact that they contain the ultraviolence of any good 1980s movie. The Uzis are a must, everything gets shot to pieces, people fly around whether they've actually been shot or not....and somehow some people survive getting shot at 900 times. Oh, and no-one ever stops to reload their guns.
Larry Fishburne: Walken's thug actually pulls his bit off.... but only if you remember that he's also skiing down the white slope. If you don't, you think that Fishburne's waggling around and screaming is a mix between MC Hammer and some Bad Disco dance. On acid.
WHAT'S NOT
Janet Julian: Playing Frank's love interest Jennifer, she was described by one reviewer as 'someone who came out for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition' (I don't know if that's complimentary of not). Julian's marginally better than Cindy Crawford's effort in Fair Game, but that's like picking train wrecks and taking the last damaged.
The racism: Christopher Walken's crew is black. They kill people of different Central, South American and Chinese backgrounds (oh, and the mafia) to get their cash. The racism between crews is blatant. Then there's the 'Irish' cop (a very angry David Caruso), who directs racist comments at Wesley Snipes at a wedding. Guys: Stop saying that stuff. I get that you're all baddies, but there's no need for it (Props to Walken for not caring where the cocaine comes from, as long as he's distributing it).
The lighting: Everything's lit in a blue hue, but not in the sort of hue we joked about in the love scene in Top Gun. It's actually pretty stylish. Of course, you spend so much time craning at the screen to see what's happening when it gets TOO dark, but that's another thing. Candles sometimes punctuate it.
The haircuts: As most movies at the time proved, this wasn't a good decade for haircuts. But Walken's is awful (all he needed was a bit of gel), Caruso's orange hair could been seen from a satellite (I almost think that they added orange to make him more Irish and don't get me started on Snipes and Fishburne.
The kissing: Walken and Julian's intimacy on the New York Subway is like watching two snakes snogging. But hey, it's more convincing than Tom Cruise and Kelly McGinnis' effort in Top Gun.
The trailer: We'd show you the trailer but you would already have seen 90% of the film if you do.
And one more thing....
Watch King of New York and New Jack City back-to-back, and they are basically the same film. Both are looking to be kings of the city using cocaine-based drugs as their by-product. Both put Uzi-holes through their competition. They are being chased down by some angry cops who won't stop at anything to get their men. There's a lot of blatant nudity. With the gangster HAS to become the nightclub. And the scripts are pretty damned bad, too. Oh, and Wesley Snipes goes from cop to Crack King in the space of 365 days. King of New York made $2.5 million on a $5 million budget, while New Jack City - arguably a worse film - made $47.6m on a budget of $8.5 million.
SO DID I ENJOY IT?
Hell, it's a great 100 minutes worth of escapism. Just remember to have your TV as bright as it can go, so you can see through the darkness. If you don't like watching cocaine taken and bullets, this isn't one for you.
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