New Jack City

Rating:
Summary: New Jack City: No Hope, Just Dope on a Rope
Review: WHen this movie initially came out, I reviewed it for the MIlwaukee Courier. During that time I was conerned about the fact that the movie glamorized the dope "game." Van Peebles appeared on televisoin shortly thereafter and claimed the movie was an anti dope film, claiming, "if you notice, everyone who gets associated with dope ends up dying." That was his excuse for taking all that time to come up with the idea that, "since we got new jack crime, we need some new jack cops." And who, pray tell, are these cops? Ice-T, later known as the writer of the song, "Cop Killer" - which he later backed down on and now plays a cop on TV's 'homicide'. Mario Van Peebles, whose role is so convoluted its tough to tell if he's an Uncle Tom or someone who really cares about his people; Judd Nelson who, even with a goatee, still comes off looking like a nerd; lovely Vanessa Williams (the brown skinned one, not the green eyed one that married Rick Fox) plays a DA who is out to "Bust" the Cash Money Brothers and of course Chris Rock, who played a bony, nervous nitwit crackhead who infiltrates the CMB (in other words, type casting). The movie shows hwo money is amde,but more ipmortantly, how money is SPENT. Women from all walks of life (including Michael Michel, a fine sister in serious need of a breast augmentation) who fall in love with dope dealers because they have cash. But the movie belongs to Wesley Snipes, who once again takes over, not only as a drug kingpin,but as an ice cold one at that. Snipes not only has a philosophy, but at the movie's end he stands up in court and tells it lke it is: he puts the FBI and the war on drugs on front street for claiming to be anti-drug but still siting back and letting drugs come into the country. We've heard it all before, but when Wesley says it, you have to believe that it has some credibility because, after all, this is an anti-drug movie, right? "New Jack City" inspired the creation of real ones, like the one in Racine, Wisconsin over on Jacato Drive. Some thugs actually felt they could take over entire apartment buildings and run drugs without the cops coming around. Sheer fantasy. What's next: Galactic Jack City, with thugs selling space crack out of a flying saucer? Sheesh! I gave the movie a 3 in 1992; I'm giving it a "1" now. See it and you can see how the real dope dealers have changed from back in the day.