The World Is Mine: New Jack City

Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) has a plan to ascend to the top of the drug dealing food chain. Using crack cocaine, he can hook people in seconds. Cut out the mobsters, get a supply directly from the Peruvians, and he can save on graft, putting that money directly into investment. But Nino dreams bigger. He wants to take over the Carter Complex, a living project, and turn it into a one stop drug store. Processing, distribution, collections can all be stored under one roof! What about the people who live there? He grins as he verbally divides them into employees, customers, and living hostages. Nino Brown is a bad, bad man. He’s also nigh untouchable by the law. Nothing sticks to him. With his brother Gee-Money (Allen Payne), the stuttering leg breaker Duh Duh Duh Man (Bill Nunn), slick willy Kareem Akbar (Christopher Williams), lovely and lethal Keisha (Vanessa Williams), and a cadre of close associates, he organizes the Cash Money Brothers (CMB) as his gang and makes his dream into a reality.

However, there are some people who want to find the weakness in Nino’s armor and render him touchable. Idealist Stone (Mario Van Peebles) is organizing a new task force with the mission of nailing Nino Brown. He’s got a couple of New Jack cops to tackle this New Jack crook, including reliable Park (Russell Wong), the hair triggered Scotty Appleton (Ice-T) and crazy man Nick Peretti (Judd Nelson). Along the way, they pick up a useful informant, Pookie (Chris Rock), help him clean up his act, and then let him walk right into the lion’s den.

Unfortunately, in this game of cops and crooks, everyone is on their game, and the balance of power shifts back and forth with regularity. When a sting operation goes sour, leaving Pookie compromised, Appleton and Peretti go off the ranch to take Nino down using whatever methods it takes. Going undercover, breaking and entering, and more. Who will triumph? The cops or a brilliant hood like Nino Brown? We know who will suffer: the people, embodied here by Bill Cobbs as “Old Man.” Mario Van Peebles repurposes classic gangster films as well as cops and crooks flicks to fashion himself a crime epic with New Jack City (1991).

Earlier this year, we took a look at Mario Van Peebles’ stylish western, Posse (1993). It was an entertaining flick that recontextualized classic westerns for a contemporary era. It had a terrific cast, a meaty story, a bad guy who was charming as hell and utterly evil. It also had camerawork that drew attention to itself, whirling around and making crazy moves that worked with the mythic style that film was going for. Many of these elements (though not the crazy camerawork) are found in this, Van Peebles’ earlier film and feature length directorial debut—prior to New Jack City, he’d acted quite a bit and directed for television.

Even in this piece, Mario Van Peebles understands the importance of talented collaborators.

Director of photography Francis Kenny knows how to shoot for information, but he also adds a stylish twists to incorporate both setting and character details often to maximize emotional impact. There’s a moment where we witness inner city youths chanting along with a teacher about saying No to Drugs which then cuts to the drug vials floating in puddles around their feet. There’s a meeting of characters that imparts some nice character information, which ends with one standing alone, and the camera then rises to reveal he’s standing in the middle of graffiti announcing Crack Kills. Little touches like that use the setting itself as a character and add extra emotional weight without the camera calling too much unnecessary attention to itself.

The music from Vassal Benford and Michel Colombier score combines nicely with a soundtrack that includes rap and R&B cuts from the late 80s/early 90s. Those music cuts might not be completely authentic to the era of the film itself, but they nevertheless fits the mood of the film. And the score is a good mix of pathos and attitude, mating up to the images quite nicely indeed.

The script from Thomas Lee Wright and Barry Michael Cooper is an intriguing thing. The original draft and story from Wright might actually have been a hopeful contender for Godfather III, the story centering on heroin distribution and the mob. However, with Cooper’s contributions, the story moved instead into urban gang territory, heroin transmogrifying into crack cocaine. It’s not a seamless transition or without controversy. However, the story it chooses to tell is a harrowing one.

There is a biblical theme running throughout the film. After a glorious overhead shot of the city (played against various radio stations, some playing rap music, others playing news bytes about the increasing crime levels), we cut to a city park where a bit of Corinthians is spray painted on a building wall:

Don’t Be Deceived!

Neither Fornicators Nor

Idolators Nor Adulterers

Nor Abusers Of Themselves

With Mankind Nor

Thieves Nor Drunkards

Nor Revelers Nor

Extortioners

Shall Inherit The

Kingdom Of God.

This passage will recur during one of the graveside sermons in the film, spoken just before the ashes to ashes conclusion. Who of our characters is slated to enter heaven’s gates? Not many of them.

As well, we get several tips of the hat to other Biblical elements. Nino Brown’s big message of unity between the members of CMB is “Am I My Brother’s Keepers?” Later on, he calls his own backstabbing brother Abel, suggesting he will be the Cain to kill him. Bill Cobb’s Old Man character refers to the CMB gang as idolators, and we all know the wages of that particular sin.

In some ways, the Carter becomes a model of Dante’s Inferno, with different rings or layers depending on who can be found there—the nightmarish courtyard, the drug store, the Enterprise where crackheads suck on the pipe, the apartment cells, and other locations are plagued with CMB devils and populated with variations on the Damned …

New Jack City‘s message, then, is one infused with Biblical allusions and old testament stylings. Death is not interested in the color of people’s skin, and it doesn’t care what side of the law its victims occupy. Damnation is just a single misstep away, as exemplified in Chris Rock’s character, who starts out as a runner, gets shot and winds up on crack, is forced through rehab, and then sides with the “angels” until temptation gets to be too much for him to bear. Then, he slips back down into horror again.

Chris Rock is a hell of an actor, and his portrayal of Pookie here is heartbreaking. It would not be unfair to the other strong performers to put the crown on Rock’s head for this performance. He goes through so many shifts in character, and he embraces the character’s hells as well as his aspirations with aplomb. We cringe when he beats on a fellow vagrant for a piece of turkey, we chuckle when he turns on the charm, we shudder when he looks into the hidden camera and pleads for help from the cops he’s aiding, and we mourn when he meets his fate.

As well, Wesley Snipes delivers a powerhouse performance here as the grinning devil in charge of an empire. He brings charisma to the role, as well as heart. The character could easily have become a one note monster, but Snipes gives us a layered performance. Snipes, writers Wright and Cooper, and director Mario Van Peebles perform a delightfully subversive bit of manipulation. We want his character to succeed, even though we also want him to pay for his crimes. Anyone who has seen gangster movies knows the classic arc—the gangster movie is about the rise to power and the inevitable fall—but we kind of want Nino Brown to break that tried and true cycle. If anyone could, this character just might.

The always watchable Bill Cobb is the heart and soul of the movie, the voice demanding answers and help, the man who is forced to find terrible answers himself. He’s got a gaze to him, which I’ve loved from his earlier work right up through his turn as the cranky neighbor in the Dino Dana series my daughter watches on Amazon Prime. A wonderful actor.

Ice-T radiates cool like no one else. I was a fan of his music back in the day, and I’ve rather enjoyed his podcast. Hell, I got the R.A. Salvatore Forgotten realms anthology audiobook just for the chance to hear Ice-T read a Dungeons and Dragons story, and I have no regrets. Here, he gets to play against the gangsta image of his music, turning instead to play a lawman. The guy’s got one hell of a badass face, but I really like the pathos he brings to his character’s interactions with Pookie. It’s downright paternal.

The film is not without its missteps, however.

New Jack City is certainly of its time. Slang has rambled along, as it does, so some of the dialogue will leave contemporary viewers scratching their heads. Likewise, Judd Nelson’s character’s constant harping on “Is this a Black thing?” is wearying. In fact, Nelson’s character seems superfluous to the goings on much of the time. The Peretti character feels almost like a token Caucasian to lure white audiences in.

The close captioning on the Blu-ray disc is also pretty laughable. Lines of dialogue are pared away, dropping the slang and the lyrical language for straight forward communication of intent. I don’t know who is responsible for the subtitling but it’s a hoot. Neither faithful to the actual dialogue not wholly incorrect in its interpretation.

New Jack City might be steeped in the slang and edginess of four decades ago, making it an unusual historical fiction these days (it was a period piece back then, as well, set five years before its release), but the film still has strong performances and visual style to keep our attention and keep us guessing. Mario Van Peebles is a terrific director. Here he gets to play both in front of and behind the camera, and the result is electrifying stuff.

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New Jack City is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming editions.

Next, we take a look at another slice of 1990s crime. Laurence Fishburne stars as a cop who has to assume another identity if he’s going to nail the drug dealing mob in Bill Duke’s Deep Cover (1992). That film is available on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming editions.

Writing for “The World Is Mine: New Jack City” is copyright © 2021 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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