Month: February 2005

Watched “New Jack City” on DVD. This is a really old movie (from 1991) and I think I’ve seen it before.

This film is a nobel attempt to show all the bad things about drugs and crimes using the methods of the recently (80-s) popular action movies. The drug scenes are pretty good, but the rest of the film is pretty worthless. The story around Chris Rock‘s character Pookie was done pretty good – criminal, drug addict falling down, than discovered by some good people, rehubed and cleaned up, and than falling back. The second fall is much faster than the first one. And is one-way ticket. Anyway, the scene where Pookie smokes crack after rehub, I believe, was inspirational to plenty of movies (Tarantino‘s work, “Trainspotting“, “Requiem for a dream“, etc). Great work here!

The problem with this film is actually the story that it is based on. There are too many things in it, but it is not complex by any means. Most of the stuff is meaningless anyway. And the drama needed more work. I mean we are talking about a whole bunch of victims of drug usage, but the only person crying in the whole movie is the drug lord himself, before shooting one of his comrades. Strange. Something is broken here.

This film played its role in the inspiration of drug fighting movies. It is too old to be watched this days, unless, of course, you are the fan of those. Take something else. 5 out of 10.