To describe Abel Ferrara as something of a cinematic enfant terrible would be something of a devastating understatement. Hell, the fact that he made Driller Killer alone marks him out as a supremely edgy talent, but when you consider that he also made such controversial works as rape revenge flick, Ms. 45 and the Harvey Keitel nude-a-thon, Bad Lieutenant, his is a voice that’s impressively nihilistic.
However, while his personal brand of morals-free storytelling has never been for everyone, his stylish, 1990s gangster film, King Of New York was something weirdly different. Sure, it has all the debauchery and lack of respect for human life seen in such other lawless epics as Goodfellas or Scarface, but there’s something different going on under its slick skin that marks it out as a film that’s not quite as simple as the usual, rags-to-riches-to-jail/dead, path gangster movies usually take.
Frank White is charismatic a drug lord who has just emerged from prison after a long sentence with big plans running through his brain. He’s barely been back out into the world for a single night before he’s met up with his trigger-happy right hand man, Jimmy Jump, and started forging ahead to ruthlessly consolidate power by offering his rivals harsh ultimatums that are usually underlined by a hail of bullets.
After turning a Colombian drugs baron into a sticky red stain on a sofa, Frank next turns his attention to a incredibly racist mafia boss who soon gets the same treatment. However, there’s more going on here than Frank just obliterating the competition, but as he turns his attention to the Triads, there’s another party who are just itching to take White off the board once and for all: the NYPD narcotics squad.
Led by the over emotional Gilley and backed up by the cynical Bishop and the loyal Flanagan, there’s a group of cops who are growing increasingly frustrated with White walking the streets with impunity and they soon plan to get him and his gun-waving cronies of the streets of New York by any means necessary.
However, the twist is that even though Frank is rushing around, viciously making the streets run red with blood, he’s doing it in order to not only ultimately go straight, but to actually try and do some good in the world by taking out criminals who make their living by more unsavory means than just the drug trade.
Of course, Gilley and his group of cops couldn’t give the slightest of shits about any of this, and plan to storm one of Frank’s clubs in an attempt to assassinate him, unaware of the pain and devastation they’re about to bring down on everyone involved.
Cold, enigmatic and supremely aloof, Ferrara’s King Of New York is more of an art house stab at the modern mob movie than the some of the more populist examples that existed at the time. But while Scorsese and De Palma took the lives of charismatic criminals to glossy extremes, Ferrara chooses to a more minimalist route, leaving the motives of its complex lead more nebulous than just desiring money and power. Yes, the vaguely reptilian Frank is trying to go legit, but it feels less like a character trait and more like Ferrara is drawing metaphorical parallels with himself as he slowly rises from the grotty mean streets of low budget grunge horror to something more “prestigious”.
However, Ferrara is still Ferrara after all, and he seems to be massively enjoying blurring those moral lines to such an exaggerated point that discerning good from bad is virtually impossible. Frank may be as cold blooded as a refrigerated snake, but when he isn’t violently purging the criminal underworld from those who dabble in child prostitution and human trafficking, he’s trying to get funding sorted for a community hospital. Further adding more layers than an onion wearing a puffer jacket, the movie also interestingly has its anti-hero work with a crew predominantly made up of black men, which, for a genre that tends to include a lot of people with highly racist attitudes, is quite novel.
This seems to tie directly the film’s themes that insist no one is truly evil, just as much as no one can possibly be good, hence we get Frank’s bizarre, Robin Hood mentality harshly rubbing up against the fact that he’s a drug peddler who is obviously violently sociopathic which is mirrored by the police who will happily flaunt the law to out and out execute the guy.
To be totally honest, while it’s a deeply interesting experience, it doesn’t always make a hell of a lot of sense, but when you have an insanely hungry cast such as this, Ferrara’s art house logic becomes a virtue, rather than a burden. In the centre of it all, standing with his legs wide apart and liable to break out in dance at any moment, is Christopher Walken’s Frank, who is as reliably as wild as you could possibly hope. Sporting an almost vertical frizz and an inhuman glare, he not only slots neatly into Ferrara’s world, he powers it like a cackling dynamo.
It seems to be catching, as almost matching him for sheer energy is Lawrence Fishburn’s riotous Jimmy Jump, that sees the actor utterly unrestrained as White’s shoot-first-ask-questions-never number two. While anyone who’s familiar with the actor knows the dude likes to chew the scenery a little with that characteristically booming voice, the gold-toothed, trash talking, murderous Jimmy is probably the most extreme the actor has ever been, and yet, once again, it still works within the context of the film.
Elsewhere, the rest of the cast is peppered with some big names in smaller rolls that sees the likes of David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, Steve Buscemi and Giancarlo Esposito strut their stuff as the movie often veers into vague Lynchian territory – who else but Ferrera would stage a meeting between Frank’s man and the Triads in a cinema that’s showing the 1922 Nosferatu.
While maybe a bit too abstruse for those hoping for more standard criminal practices, King Of New York still manages to bring the visceral thrills when it needs to (a car chase/shootout in the rain is particularly memorable) to offset it’s more stranger leanings. While maybe not the undisputed king of the American crime movie, King Of New York certainly is memorable enough to confidently hold court.
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