Movie Review: King Of New York (1990)

A stylishly gloomy crime drama, King Of New York layers on the artsy violence but leaves behind any reason to care about its principal characters.

Crime lord Frank White (Christopher Walken) is released from prison and immediately heads back to New York to regain control of his empire. His gang members, led by Jimmy Jump (Laurence Fishburne), pave the way for Frank's return by killing rival gang leaders El Zapa and King Tito, the former in a phone booth outside a high class brothel, the latter in a hotel room.

Frank then applies pressure on Mafia boss Arty Clay and Triad leader Larry Wong, demanding a cut of their business. Clay refuses to cooperate, and Wong attempts to negotiate. Both pay a heavy price for failing to comply with Frank's wishes.With Frank's lawyer Jennifer (Janet Julian) keeping him and his men beyond the reach of the courts, police detectives Bishop (Victor Argo), Gilley (David Caruso) and Flanigan (Wesley Snipes) grow increasingly frustrated. Gilley advocates going outside the law to deal with Frank, adding fuel to the wave of violence sweeping across the city.

An independent production directed by Abel Ferrara with an emphasis on wild action set-pieces, King Of New York packs plenty of intense shoot-outs, chases, and general scenes of carnage and violence into a relatively short 106 minutes of running time. This is a film that transforms New York into a war zone where hundreds of bullet rounds are sprayed around on a nightly basis, as gangsters kill each other with savagery driven by hatred and the imperative need to control the drug trade.

Ferrara delivers all the brutality with an eye on moody and stylish packaging, the action often happening at night, the gangsters largely emotionless as they kill to the beat of rap music and under the toxic influence of drugs, with random gyrating women always within reach.

It's all wildly entertaining but also not even remotely realistic, and as an exercise in sleek crime depiction King Of New York is hampered by an almost complete absence of character introduction or development. Frank White remains an almost robotic blank slate, save for one quite unconvincing late speech about his criminality being less criminal than his rivals. A half-baked sub-plot about Frank channeling funds to an inner-city hospital project holds promise but is underdeveloped.

The secondary characters fare worse, and next to nothing is known about all the other crime bosses and the three police detectives. But Laurence (billed as Larry) Fishburne does get to let loose in a pretty insane depiction of the trigger-happy Jimmy Jump, a man so far gone on the culture of drugs and violence that he is actually enjoying the madness that comes with hurtling towards oblivion.

King Of New York dances to the beat of anarchic artistry, but beyond all the bloodshed the king has few other clothes on.

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Movie Review: Proof Of Life (2000)

A romantic triangle set amidst the drama of a businessman's kidnapping in South America, Proof Of Life is engaging but flawed. A spluttering romance never quite catches fire, and an all-guns-blazing finale undermines the character-centred drama that the film patiently constructs.

Peter Bowman (David Morse) is an American construction manager, supervising a dam project in the fictional South American country of Tecala. His wife Alice (Meg Ryan) is having a hard time adjusting to life in Tecala, resulting in significant tension within the marriage. The day after a big argument, Peter is kidnapped by guerrillas belonging to the Liberation Army of Tecala (ELT) and marched at gunpoint deep into the inhospitable mountains. Terry Thorne (Russell Crowe) works for a British consulting firm that specializes in negotiating hostage releases. Assigned to Peter's case, Terry meets Alice but is called back to London due to Peter's company having no kidnap insurance coverage. But Terry's brief encounter with Alice caused a connection, and he decides to return and help her on a freelance basis.

Over several months Terry conducts arduous negotiations to agree on a price for the release of Peter, while a strong attraction evolves between Terry and Alice. Terry also meets up with other hostage consultants working in Tecala, including the fiery Dino (David Caruso). Peter, meanwhile, struggles to stay alive and sane in a remote ramshackle jungle camp, where some of the guerrillas are looking for any opportunity to physically harm him while others see his value as a healthy hostage. Despite Terry's best efforts, the negotiations break down, Peter's life is thrown into jeopardy, and Terry and Dino need to decide if more drastic action is warranted, in the form of a military rescue attempt.

Director Taylor Hackford has a resume filled with flawed gems, including Against All Odds, White Nights and Everybody's All-American. Proof Of Life is littered with question marks that perforate the credibility of Tony Gilroy's script. Central to the movie's purpose, Terry's motivation for coming back to help Alice is never convincingly dealt with; the coincidence that helps Terry to identify the ELT negotiator is wild-eyed; and late in the proceeding, the reasons for the ELT sparing Peter's life on the jungle mountainside are vague. The sudden transformation of Terry from a suave negotiator to a mercenary joining a group of suddenly heavily-armed westerners launching a hastily planned jungle raid in a foreign land is also quite jarring.

Helping to traverse the rocky patches in the longish running time of 135 minute are three strong central performances. Meg Ryan in particular shines as Alice, finding the dilemma zone between fear, frustration, worry for the fate of a missing husband and growing affection for the man now in control of her life. Russell Crowe is comfortably confident as a man who rarely encounters any situation that he cannot control to his advantage. David Morse has the difficult task of playing the missing third point in the triangle, and he does well as a man who grabs onto the thought and image of his wife to maintain sanity in prolonged captivity. In an ironic example of life somewhat imitating art, the filming of Proof Of Life sparked a real-life relationship between Ryan and Crowe, destroying Ryan's marriage to Dennis Quaid.

Proof Of Life does benefit from some intentional loose ends related to the future happiness of the main characters. This is a welcome change from routine happy endings, and consistent with a common theme in Hackford's films: relationships are difficult, messy, and not always cheerful.

Proof Of Life's greatest strength is its relatively unique setting and stressful backdrop, exploring the rich territory of romance flourishing in times of extreme tension, when the normalcy of life is overturned and the well-established rules of day-to-day living are forcefully abandoned. Falling in love is one proof of life when there appears to be little to live for.

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