KING OF NEW YORK a Abel Farrara film

[L .B . Jeffries]

KING OF NEW YORK RATED R/106 MINS/1990

DIRECTOR
Abel Farrara

CAST
Frank White Christopher Walken
Dennis Gilley David Caruso
Jimmy Jump Larry Fishburne
Roy Bishop Victor Argo
Thomas Flannigan Wesley Snipes
Jennifer Poe Janet Julian



Where "SCARFACE" left off.....
"KING OF NEW YORK" Begins.

Christopher Walken plays (Frank White) so calm
but menecing that you start to think he might
be invinsible like a super-hero or something.
He's the man , the head of organization that deals
in drugs and murder.It's really simple he's fricken
crazy and will stop at nothing to run New York.


This has got to be one of my favorite gangster films.
Characters popping in and out of scenes. The
cops , I love the cops there just as crazy as the
gangsters. Another thing that really stuck in my mind was
the cross cutting between the cops and gangsters and how
far each would go to get one another.


Fishburne character is one of the best villians ever to
grace the screen he has some how rose above everyboby
including Walken. He's ferocious his character is something
out of a comic book with his gold teeth,two magnums , hat
and always carring a smirk on his face.
The only let down in the film had to be the color sceme
all the ice blue tones and deep blacks got to be a bit to
much and were not needed to created atmosphere they had
New York and that in itself is enough atmosphere for any
movie.


Abel Ferrara is one of those directors ready to be discovery
who has made many great films but they have only been
recognized as cult movies. This I think is going to be the
film to break that barrier.
________
COLORADO MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES (http://colorado.dispensaries.org/)

[Holden Pike]

I've always liked King of New York (http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004U29K.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg). It's one of the few starring vehicles for Christopher Walken, and he's his usually magnetic unusual self. Great cast all around, featuring Fishburne, Snipes, Steve Buscemi, Giancarlo Esposito, Victor Argo, and a pre-"NYPD Blue" David Caruso.

But while I like the film and would recommend it, I also think it's one of those that was so ignored and underrated initially that it has become a tad overrated in compensation ever since. It enjoys a healthy cult status, which is probably about right.

Abel Ferrara's take on the ultra modern Gangster film is interesting and stylized, and Walken's character in particular is a unique fella you won't soon forget, but it's not even close to the same league as a GoodFellas, released the same year - which explains one of the reasons King of New York was overlooked. Yes, Scorsese and Ferrara had different goals and antithetical approaches, but as an overall complete piece, GoodFellas is miles and miles ahead.

I did like King of New York much more than the following year's New Jack City - which was similar and actually a bit of a hit somehow in '91. But for an underssen off-beat movie set in an innercity drug-infested gangland milieu, I'd recommend Boaz Yakin's exceedingly clever and very well-crafted Fresh (1994), which was truly unseen and still very underrated.

Compared to the highwire love-it-or-lump it brilliance and bravado on display in Ferrara's masterpiece, Bad Lieutenant, King of New York is fairly ordinary. And as for a Ferrara flick with mainstream appeal, I'd steer people toward Body Snatchers (1993), where the familiar Pods vs. Human struggle is transplanted to an isolated Southern U.S. Military Base. The idea of trying to find duplicate emotionless humans in a setting where individuality and emotion are supposed to be supressed in the first place is a good twist on the material, and Ferrara's dark, warped style fits like a glove. The scene of the pod attackng a potential sleeping victim in a bathtub may be the creepiest Pod work of the three flicks that officially use Jack Finney's story as inspiration (also the '56 and '78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers). And here's an interesting bit of trivia from Ferrara's Body Snatchers: actress Meg Tilly was body doubled in her nude scene by her older sister, Jennifer Tilly.


But if you've never seen King of New York, it's certainly an interesting piece, if nothing else from an acting standpoint, and it's worth a rental some night when you want something a little different. It rates a B- from me.