Rating: 4/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 8/52 | Abel Ferrera
Frank White leaves his jail cell in Sing Sing Penitentiary. Two guards walk him past cells and out to his freedom. A black limo picks him up and brings him to a gated compound. El Zapa, a Colombian cartel boss, wanders a brothel, feeling up the passed-out women before getting dressed and heading out to make a phone call at the phone booth. He feels the doors slam shut as three men fill him with lead. As El Zapa dies, one man shows him a newspaper headline: “Frank White released from prison.”
Test Tube sits in the Travelodge Hotel, testing coke that he and Jimmy Jump are buying from King Tito. Tito gets impatient and raises the cost. Jimmy Jump accepts the offer and sets down a large briefcase. Tito opens it to find it full of tampons. You know, to plug the bullet holes. Test Tube and Jimmy Jump get the jump on Tito and his men, taking them out.
Between hits, we see White riding through the lower-income streets of NYC in his limo. He goes to the plaza with two women and meets with the assassinating gangsters we’ve met thus far. The film pretends that they’re there to take Frank out, but they celebrate Frank’s return and give him the good news about the Colombians. Frank meets with some friends at the restaurant downstairs, where he announces that prison reformed him and he plans on running for mayor.
The movie follows Frank as he pursues his contradictory aspirations of ruling the underworld and going legit. Or do both serve the same purpose? Will the police, who catch onto Frank’s escapades, find a way to bring him down?
It’s wild to think that folks shunned this movie for being too violent. So many movies inject unnecessary gore these days that what we see here is quaint by comparison. Not that it doesn’t hit — its reputation for violence has merely diminished over the years.
The screenplay is a crackerjack box of expectation reversals and tension. The pacing is chef’s kiss. The anti-powers-that-be messaging is as relevant as ever. The third act really ramps it up with well-choreographed shootouts, coherent car chases, and endless rain. It plays out like an opera.
Even before Ferrera made The Addiction, he had a thing for vampires — here, it’s subtle until it isn’t, what with the Triad members watching Nosferatu. Frank is a sudden force taking over the city. Also, there’s some unambiguous homoeroticism, a prerequisite of every good Dracula adaptation.
** ACTOR TALK **
- I don’t think I’ve seen Christopher Walken quite like this. He carries that menace of someone who could be joking one moment and deadly serious the next.
- OH HELLO HAROLD PERRINEAU! He makes a brief appearance as a gang leader.
- Laurence Fishburne is chewing the fuck out of that scenery, but that’s his trademark.
- Theresa Randle is carrying a gun and looking like a goddamn smokeshow.
- Giancarlo Esposito! He maintains that classic stoic face while one of his team members moons the detectives.
- Fucking David Caruso and Wesley Snipes as boy detectives.