Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 9, 1991 TAG: 9103090369
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's basically a cops-vs.-gangsters saga. But Mario Van Peebles, in his feature directing debut, lavishes a lot of style and insight into street culture on the production. The result is a full-tilt action movie that sounds and looks authentic despite some baroque flourishes and some commendable but heavy anti-drug messages.
It looks like Van Peebles, an established actor and the son of director Melvin Van Peebles, has the skills to stake out a position in the emerging wave of talented, young black filmmakers.
The story begins in 1986 and focuses on a gang of drug dealers determined to revolutionize their industry through centralization and computer technology. Wesley Snipes, in a commanding and complex performance, plays gang leader Nino Brown.
Smart, ambitious, ruthless and egotistical, Nino sets out to spread crack cocaine throughout New York and at the same time challenges the more powerful Italian-American mobsters.
Determined to thwart Nino's efforts is Stone, a police officer played by Van Peebles. Stone figures the only way to topple Nino is to sic two unorthodox and fearless mavericks on him.
Scotty Appleton, played by rap artist Ice T, is an undercover narcotics officer who favors dreadlocks and shades. Leather-jacketed Nick Peretti, played by Judd Nelson, is equally tough and street smart. Predictably, these two strong-willed officers begin their partnership with antipathy toward each other. By the time they're assigned to the case, Nino has built an empire that occupies a huge apartment building complete with a drug lab, a distribution system and an accountant who runs a room full of computer terminals.
Van Peebles and screenwriters Thomas Lee Wright and Barry Michael Cooper approach the material with a lot of ambition. There are several subplots and they all may not be fully developed. But the filmmakers have refused to leave any empty spaces in the story. They don't mind throwing away some good lines, either, in an attempt to make the dialogue sound authentic. It does.
The performances vary but the lead actors all turn in strong efforts.
Snipes gives scope to the classic role of the mobster ruled by his own greed and ambition. Ice T is a convincing new action hero. And Nelson is thankfully more toned down than he has been in a while.
"New Jack City" isn't without some problems. But it gives fans of action movies a lot more for their ticket dollars than a lot of recent ballistics epics that come with bigger names and more hype.
`NEW JACK CITY' : A Warner Brothers picture at the Towers Theatre (345-5519) and Valley View Mall 6 (362-8219). Rated R for violence, language and sexual content; 105 minutes.
by CNB