Abel Ferrara has about as high a profile as is possible for a director who, according to the Internet Movie Database, has never had a single film gross even 3 million dollars domestically. And his profile is fairly high for a director who has (for obvious reasons) never been nominated for any Oscars or Golden Globes and whose films have likewise been denied mainstream recognition (except for Independent Film Awards). What Ferrara has, that no amount of baubles and bucks can equal (sortta), is the respect of several major critics, who look at Ferrara's gritty New York dramas as coming from a unique and personal sensibility. To those few critics (Roger Ebert is *not* among them, Kevin Thomas of the LA Times *is*) anything Ferrara does is worth monitoring and analyzing as if once you've seen one drug-filled Catholicism-laced Ferrara film, you haven't seen them all. But you sortta have. There are better Ferrara films and then there are Ferrara films that I wouldn't inflict on my high school algebra teacher (You know you're out there, Mr. Navarolli). For Abel Ferrara, it doesn't get much worse than 1998's New Rose Hotel (see my profile for my review) and it doesn't get much better than King of New York.

In the early 1990s, cinema saw the Gangster drama (whose roots trace back to the D.W. Griffith short Musketeers of Pig Alley, a nifty little film if you ever get the chance to catch it) reborn in Gangsta form. East Coast. West Coast. It didn't matter. Not that the Los Angeles gangstas of Boyz n The Hood and Menace II Society are the same as the East Coast gangstas of New Jack City and King of New York, mind you. In his book Am I Black Enough For You?, Todd Boyd correctly observes that while those West Coast films covered new ground in expanding representations of lower class African-American survival in the city, the East Coast gangsta films were essentially variations on the long standing gangster paradigm. King of New York could be Scarface (the 1932 Paul Muni original) or Little Caesar (the 1931 Edward G. Robinson original and not the Detroit-based pizza chain) or The Public Enemy (the 1931 James Cagney original and not any group involving Flava Flav). Big white gangster tries to take over the city, inevitably runs afoul with the coppers, and inevitably must fall (not to spoil anything, but come on...). That formula is only slightly updated in New Jack City and Sugar Hill (both films I prefer to King of New York, if you're keeping score at home), with an African-American kingpin (a variation also prevalent in 1970s Blaxploitation).

Although it barely made a nickel in theatres, King of New York gained a massive cult following on video, making its main character into something of a legend. King of New York offers one-stop-shopping for film fans who want to get a good idea of what makes Abel Ferrara tick, but don't want to waste their time with the failed Madonna vehicle Dangerous Game or the disappointing Walken/Christopher Penn The Funeral.

How a man exits jail says a lot about his character. In Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's 11, everything you need to know about George Clooney's Danny Ocean can be summed up in the simple detail that he leaves jail in a tux. In King of New York, Christopher Walken's Frank White may be leaving the stir, but the minute he walks out the gates he's picked up in a limo. And in that limo are two gorgeous women. And that limo takes him straight to his suite at the Plaza. Frank White may be a criminal, but he's about as white collar as they get.

White has a lengthy rap sheet, but I'm not entirely sure what he was sent away for, but whatever it was, it must have been petty, since he hasn't been in jail all that long. But being cooped up for several years has made him a bit chippy and he returns to the street with pretty high aspirations. His first order of business is meeting with several of his lieutenants including the live-wire cap-toothed Jimmy Jump (Laurence "Larry" Fishburne), geeky mad scientist Test Tube (Steve Buscemi), and cool cat Lance (Giancarlo Esposito). White's gang is fresh from killing a group of Columbian drug dealers at an airport hotel and even after running things for while, they're perfectly happy to cede power to Frank.

But Frank's aspirations go beyond what can be achieved with a gang of minority henchmen. He soon makes his way to a classy Manhattan restaurant, where there's a seat for him at a table of luminaries including lawyers, politicians, and other glitterati. White is treated like a hero at the eatery even though everybody there knows that he just got out of jail. And when one of his esteemed dinner guests looks him in the eye and asks, "What can we expect from the reformed Frank White," he responds, "I want to be mayor." She thinks he's joking and other people chuckle away, but the look in White's eyes makes it clear that he's serious.

But perhaps, as the film's title implies, White has even larger aspirations. He goes from the fancy dinner to a meeting with a group of Mafia bigwigs, playing cards in a backroom. We discover that the Italian mobsters don't respect Frank White because of his close ties to the minority communities. But calm as you please, White shoots his major rival and issues a simple ultimatum: Any deals that go down in New York go through him.

As you might imagine, Frank White's return to down isn't a cause for celebration in precincts across the New York police department. And a group of cops including Dennis Gilley (David Caruso), Roy Bishop (Victor Argot), and Thomas Flanigan (Wesley Snipes as somebody named "Thomas Flanigan"?) make it their mission to put White away. At first they're prepared to do it by legal means, but gradually they become frustrated with the impotence of the law and they look for other alternatives.

In King of New York, Abel Ferrara established a pretty pat ambiguity regarding his criminals and his legitimate authorities. It's a dichotomy that runs through many of Ferrara's films, that sometimes the law is just as crooked as the criminals. So here we have a group of NYPD Blue refusing to play by the rules, contrasted by Frank White. White is a vicious killer, but it's also a mentor of sorts to a gang of Lost Boys, giving them economic prospects and job dignity. More convincing is White's desire to donate 15 million dollars to maintain an inner city hospital. An angry Caruso declares at some point that, "The whole system favors the scumbag." And at another point, Walken protests that, "I'm not your problem... I'm just a businessman." Ferrara structures the film so that you at least have an inkling that they're both right. In a city overrun with drugs and violence, somebody's going to sell the drugs and somebody's going to commit the violence. If Frank White is at least willing to give his tithe, then he's bound to be an improvement over many of the alternatives. It's a grey area that Ferrara gets a kick out of.

As is his regular style, Ferrara walks a line between documentary realism and wildly overblown visual artifice. In doing this, he sets up an interesting binary between "life," as a poverty-stricken absolute, an unfortunate result of an unfortunate economic system, and "life style" as in the way that some people who exist outside of the downtrodden mainstream can somehow exist, usually at the expense of the less fortunate. The world outside of The Plaza is full of street hoods, empty shells of businesses, and crime. But in Frank White's circle, the crooks are free to express themselves as they see fit because they possess the necessary coin — Walken can wear fancy suits, Buscemi and Fishburne can wear Run DMC hats, gold chains and shades, and everybody can wear fabulous trenchcoats. Out in the street, Ferrara can strip away the cinematic gloss to show the state of the world, while White and Company spend most of their time in clubs and rooms full of colored filters, flashing lights and glitz. The most famous shot in King of New York is also on the cover of the video box and it features Frank White looking out on the city from his Plaza suite. The image is shot from outside the room at night such that the reflection of skyscrapers and city lights appears in the window and it superimposed on White's face. There's a wonderful symbolism in this shot — White wants to be the King of the City, but he idealizes his rule. He wants to be in charge of the city that reflects in his hotel window and is uninterested in the fact that his criminal actions make this impossible. The *real* city is less like that reflection and more like the smoke-filled hovels under the Brooklyn Bridge and the run-down Fried Chicken restaurant in Manhattan. The NYC in White's reflection is a place where dreams come true, but the other NYC is a place where only bad things can happen. I recently was dismissive of Bojan Bazelli's undermotivated cinematography in The Ring, but in the interest of giving credit where credit is do, he's greatly responsible for helping Ferrara realize his conflicted vision.

The violence in King of New York is largely restricted to two excellent set pieces. The first is a limo shootout in Chinatown and the second a shootout that begins in an underground club and becomes a limo chase and ends up a shootout under a bridge. Both sequences are excellent. They also end up being the entire focus of the film's second half as much of the tasty ethical problems of the first half give way to several hails of bullets and more than a few character inconsistencies.

Walken is so darned charismatic that he gives the mistaken impression that we actually learn anything at all about Frank White over the course of the movie. It's pure slight of hand. The loose ends in Frank's life are legion. We don't understand his relationship to any of the variety of women in his life, nor, though, do we understand how this man can operate in the spaces he rules. How is it that Frank White, whose very name speaks to his lack of racial identity, is able to occupy this place of power within a business seemingly controlled by minorities. Toni Morrison is famed for called Bill Clinton our first Black president, but Frank White has some things in common with out 42nd president. He has an equal ability to navigate through racial space as through elite social spaces of power (which the film clearly codes as being "white" places). And I'm not really sure how he's able to pull it off except that White as gansta style. He listens to Schooly-D, throws around money with an abandon that a decade later would scream "Bling Bling", and surrounds himself with an interracial world as if it ain't no thang. But that doesn't mean that Frank White is a developed, well-rounded character. Or that we as an audience learn very much about him as the film progresses. All it means is that he's a character who intrigues us. Fair enough.

But Frank White isn't the only character here whose gaps would be troubling if they weren't so colorful. Wesley Snipes is, for example, playing a part that almost certainly was written for a white actor. Instead, the appears to be the only black cop in the city, he has an Irish name, a white wife, and little by way of depth. There are hints of unresolved race-based animosity between Snipes's character and Fishburne's but it would have been interesting if the film had actually tried to cover that ground, to explain how Fishburne's character viewed Snipes as a sell-out, but that Snipe both resented Fishburne for making him look bad, but envied his freedom, or something. Instead, Snipes is just the black cop. Nothing more. It's such a thin character that its no wonder Snipes needed New Jack City's Nino Brown (talk about an obvious name counter-point to Frank White) and Sugar Hill's Roemello Skuggs to help him truly break out.

Supporting characters start off as factors and then vanish for unexplored reasons. Buscemi's Test Tube, for example, appears to be an integral part of the crew in his opening appearance, but disappears. Ditto with Giancarlo Esposito, whose incredibly cool persona improves his every scene, even if his role has no personality traits beyond that cool. And what happens to Harold Perrineau Jr.'s petty thug who gets offered a job in an early scene, but never really follows up? Would I be wondering about these disappearing characters if they weren't played by familiar faces? Hard to tell.

Those actors who stick around long enough to make an impression are all excellent. It's Walken's show and after Deer Hunter and The Dead Zone, this is his best performance, in my opinion. And this is certainly Laurence Fishburne's most energetic performance. He's practically bouncing off walls and his scene at the aforementioned Fried Chicken restaurant is one of the film's best. Caruso has the most colorful role of any of the cops and it's mostly a blueprint for Detective John Kelley, his NYPD Blue part. Ferrara regulars Victor Argot and Paul Calderon are great as an ailing cop and one of White's leading advisors.

There's a scene in King of New York in which Frank White goes to the theatre to hob nob with the rich and to see a play. But the show is full of stylized theatrical violence, which bores White. He knows the real thing. What, I wonder, would Frank White think of King of New York? I guess he'd appreciate the cast and high-minded aspirations enough to ignore the artifice, but that he'd still rather see the artifice writ large in New Jack City. Or maybe that's just me.

Recommended:
Yes

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