New Jack City

A crime film set in New York at the end of the 1980s. Nino Brown builds a drug organisation. His method differs from what came before: he takes over an entire apartment block, moves the residents out and turns the building into a centre of production and sale. Inside there is his own security, his own order and his own rules. Before long he is one of the most powerful men in the city. On the police side there are two: a detective who bends the rules and an officer just out of addiction. Both believe nothing will be achieved by official means. Someone is put inside the organisation and the film becomes a story of infiltration. What the narrative is interested in is not only crime but the destruction a cocaine derivative caused in the neighbourhoods of that period. The film shows it directly and in one scene walks at length through a building where addicts live. Nino became one of the most remembered figures of the genre, and so did the courtroom scene at the end. Wesley Snipes plays Nino, Ice-T the detective and Chris Rock a member of the crew. Mario Van Peebles directed and appears in a part himself. There were disturbances in some cinemas on release and the film became a subject of argument; even so it was a large box office success. One of the defining examples of its kind for anyone who likes the crime films of the 1990s. Before you watch, know this: the film shows violence and addiction directly.