What’s Aged the Best?
The limo as an action-movie car; the young New York cast; the Snipes-Caruso buddy-cop movie inside it; The Wire-like structure; Caruso's wedding performance; Walken and the subway muggers; Larry Wong's MSG containers and Nosferatu hang; the hip-hop gangster milieu; 1990 New York
In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 01:17:15Read transcript
- The limo is used as an action-movie car, with Fishburne blasting two guns out of the sunroof and Theresa Randle popping out too; the opening limo is compared to Dracula's driverless coach; Night Shift and Big are mentioned for limo scenes.
- The young cast of Fishburne, Buscemi, Caruso, Snipes, Esposito and Paul Calderon; Esposito had to wait 20 more years for his famous moment.
- The Snipes-Caruso buddy-cop movie buried inside is wanted as a prequel, in the Running Scared world.
- The whole structure is basically The Wire: you watch Frank like Barksdale, know every crew member's function, meet the less flashy cops, and root for the bad guys.
- A think piece found in research argued the film paved the way for The Shield and The Wire; it was the first of its kind.
- As in The Shield, the cops' badness is real; Caruso breaks the law intending to kill Frank, which is why you root for Frank White.
- Caruso's wedding performance is named a second time, with the toast quoted, including 'The test came back negative' and Roy Bishop's Afro Sheen.
- Walken dealing with muggers on the subway is a vestige of 70s and 80s New York movies, with a super-young Harold Perrineau.
- Larry Wong keeping cocaine in giant MSG containers is a great idea, and his hanging upside down is read as a callback to Nosferatu, with Walken channeling it like a bat.
- The hip-hop gangster aspect and the Black and Puerto Rican foot-soldier gang introduced something new to gangster films and set off a dozen similar movies after New Jack City.
- 1990 New York as a locale and its actors of that moment; it is high-low New York, the Plaza and under the bridge, combining exploitation roots with a beautiful cinematic sense.
- Catching all these guys at a cool moment of their careers is another favorite.