The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Abel Ferrara's King Of New York shows a man drawn in by the seedy corridors of grime and filth, entranced by the opportunistic lives of people on the edge of reason and caged in a nasty fight for survival in a city that doesn't forgive or hand out second chances without a heavy cost. I'm talking about both the director, and the knockout lead character he guides through a morose, introspective journey of self destruction. Ferrara has always had a fascination with bottom feeding despair, inlaid with a silver lining of gutter accomplishments and wanton, frenzied attempts by his characters to carve a path for themselves, often when it's already too late for them. Christopher Walken plays Frank White, a once legendary, recently paroled criminal kingpin looking to set up shop again in the mean streets, acting as an urban Robin Hood, redistributing wealth as he sees fit and ruthlessly slaughtering his competition with the flair that only Walken can infuse into a performance. He gives a stinger of a performance, a career highlight of quiet, evil resolve, devilish glee and pondering moodiness, never the protagonist, never the antagonist, always a determined, violent man at odds with his surroundings and incapable of anything but crime. Whether ruthlessly intimidating a rival wise guy, whipping out a gun at two black punks on the subway or generally just generating an undercurrent of unease, Walken is a spectral force to be reckoned with and makes the film his own. Pretty soon some straight arrow cops zero in on him and his organization, including a dogged Victor Argo and a gung ho, reckless David Caruso. Frank throws everything he has at them, marshaled by his second in command Jimmy Jump (a fantastically sleazy Laurence Fishburne, early on in his career before he got all high and mighty). An immanent showdown looms, as it must in any decent crime thriller, but Ferrera ducks expectations with a finale that brings the energy inward for something less explosive and more contemplative, making the dark, sad poetry of it impact the viewer all the more. Rumour has it much of this film was improvised, and one can sense the organic flow of energy in the scenes, the pulse of events and character interactions taking on a startling realism that never feels forced or sensationalistic. Paul Hipp, Wesley Snipes, Janet Julian, Giancarlo Esposito, Paul Calderon, Theresa Randle, Frank Adonis, Vanessa Angel, Roger Smith and Steve Buscemi provide colourful support. One of the essential crime films, a milestone Walken performance, and a surprisingly melancholy vibe that shouldn't be missed.

King of New York is a stellar dark portrait. Stylishly shot, it makes NYC look so ugly and yet so addictive. It is far more than 'another mobster flick', with Christopher Walken giving the best performance I have seen from him yet, as he plays one of these exhausted shells persevere through and succumb to what feels like the actual underworld, reeling from shootout to shootout, breathing in the bullet-riddled air as they silently wish for respite in the shadows, a way out from this self-incarceration.Alas, the only way out is death, and a single night feels like forever. Old school hip-hop bounces into their ears to drown out the shrill cries of subway cars, an ominous musical score, the prevalent crescendos of gunfire and the haunting laughter from Laurence Fishbourne that makes the Joker and black guy from "RoboCop" appear sane by comparison. The rappers ramble in sweet smooth rhythm, a contrast to the turbulent nightmare that plagues these degenerates, a constant loop fueled by bitter hatred, constant tension, reign-fall and chaos.King of New York is a raw, ava-rich, violent, exhilarating tragedy that can dance with the best of 'em. I would dance with it all night long and enjoy the slew of topless black beauties that are bound by wickedness. I only wish that Janet Julian would have dwelt among them. What a thrill!

The early 1990s saw a huge resurgence in "gangster movies" ("Goodfellas", "Godfather 3", "New Jack City", "Boys in the Hood", "Mobsters", "Dick Tracy", "Juice", "Clockers", "Dead Presidents", "Menance to Society", "Miller's Crossing" etc etc). One of the earliest was Abel Ferrara's "King of New York".The plot? Christopher Walken plays Frank White, a drug lord who's recently been released from jail. Walken navigates the film like Noferatu in Armani, his time in prison filling his skull with delusions of grandeur; he wants New York. Not all of it. Just some.White then sets about reorganising his gangsters. He arranges a series of meetings with rival Colombian gang lords and has his lieutenants, led by Jimmy Jump (Lawrence Fisburne), execute them all. As White reclaims lost turf, and expands into new territory, he filters more and more money into local projects (eg – a Harlem hospital). With these scenes Ferrara intends to overlap blood money and social benediction, but the theme is quickly dropped.Indeed, most of the films ideas are brought up and then quickly ignored. Frank repeatedly tells street thugs to meet him at an opulent hotel, but never does. He trades ominous barbs with local gangsters, but these feuds go nowhere. Much of the film instead watches as a trio of cops, played by Victor Argo, David Caruso and Wesley Snipes, attempt to take Frank down. Realizing that "legal methods" aren't "sucessful enough", they thus resort to violent, "extralegal" measures. The film then traces two very broad movements, the cops becoming increasingly barbaric, whilst Frank, who exists in a kind of metropolitan purgatory, one foot in grimy dens, the other in luxurious hotels and up-market benefit gigs, attempts to go legitimate.Throughout the film, Ferrara approaches conventional scenes from odd angles. He stretches clichés to elaborate lengths and though his film possesses all the genre's typical plot beats, they're laid out in unconventional proportions, shootouts drawn to comically long lengths and moments of drama which would be fleshed out in another picture, treated wordlessly or quickly skirted over. This has the bizarre effect of making the film both interestingly idiosyncratic and totally uninteresting. What is Frank's goal? How did Frank become a drug lord? How does a white boy become leader of African American street gangs? Ferrara doesn't care. It's all about mood.Unfortunately this mood reeks of a very specific early 1990s aesthetic: lots of abandoned warehouses, blue light, blue filters, plastic sunglasses, pounding hip-hop, shoulder pads, mullets, Vivaldi orchestrals, Schoolly D, MTV vogue, MC Hammer shenanigans, gold chains, early 90s gun-play, fade-tops, Joo Woo style outlandishness, over-ripe imagery, dual pistol wielding, bombastic car chases, full moons, coke snorting, Bling Bling etc etc. The whole thing looks like a Patrick Nagel painting. Bizarrely, Ferrara says James Cameron's "The Terminator" was "King's" chief influence and inspiration. He set out to recreate Cameron's neon and moonlit Los Angeles in downtown New York. Style was primary, plot secondary.But while the likes of Don Corleone and Henry Hill frolic in fine suits and stylish finery, Ferrara's hoodlums look like a joke. Such an "aesthetic" plagues all the early 90s gangster movies filmed in the year they're set. Unlike something like "Scarface" (1983), which knows its costumes and decor are totally ridiculous, these films tend to present themselves without irony, and without the mediation or distance of time. One can rationalise their ridiculousness away – "the near past is a distant country, the distant past a familiar comfort" etc etc – but the fact is, early 90s fashion was pure crap. Early 90s hip-hop or black fashion, was even worse; a kind of vulgar appropriation of everything from corporate sports brands to tribal wear. This cross cultural mishmash was a celebration of individual expression, but also a means by which those whom society deemed worthless conveyed, via materialism, a signal of worth. Hop-hop fashion then celebrated values of opulence and pea-cocking, until it began to recognise its own anxieties in the mid 1990s. Its statements of bravado then became increasingly toned down, its style went up-market and the poor were slowly priced out of ghetto fashion. Later, to be black and successful suddenly meant to dress like classy white guys. Of course Frank has no time for these expressions or anxieties. He's the only "well dressed" person in the film, moving like a suited Velociraptor as he coolly plots conquest."King" ends with several protracted, bloody shootouts. Frank begins the film in the back of a stretched limo, but dies in the back of a taxi cab. "I didn't want to make money that way," he says in his epitaph. "And I never killed anybody who didn't deserve it." In the end, Frank White just wanted to be white. Legit. Establishment.Upon release, "King" was bashed for its sleaze and foul language. Ferrara would vocally defend the film, before all but disowning it years later for its "irresponsibleness", before welcoming it back with mixed feelings. The film's noirish, nighttime aesthetic is stiff compared to Ferrara's later works ("R'Xmas", "Last Day on Earth", "New Rose Hotel", "Go Go Tales" etc) and its law/order, wealth/slums juxtapositions are unsophisticated next to Ferrara's best pictures. Elsewhere "King" indulges in Ferrara's three loves: sleaze, religion and silent cinema. He paints Frank White as a vampire risen from the dead tombs of incarceration (the rat sequence from Murnau's "Nosferatu's" is seen playing on a cinema screen), ready to spread his disease. But Frank also has a Jesus complex, hoping to deliver a great, apocalyptic purge; to clean up the city with his new religion. Elsewhere the film oscillates between beautiful, spare, elegant imagery, totally cheesy moments, and crypto-Catholic imagery (blood sacrifices, bent Catholicism, rebirths, deaths etc) 6/10 – Worth one viewing.

Legend has it that Abel Ferrera's girlfriend broke up with him at the premier of this gangster flick. Ya gotta love a movie director who manages to offend his own squeeze... That said, there is a lot wrong with this picture - the bust-happy obsessed cops are one dimensional goons; the black crooks are a little too street sassy to be believed (especially Fishburne); and the plotting tends toward the generic. There are few plot twists, and few unexpected happenings. Ultimately, though, the flashy visuals trump the flaws and the look of the picture triumphs over its more forgettable elements. Ferrera creates a glossy, almost movie star world for the Frank White character to inhabit, while giving us an appropriately grimy and rundown urban landscape just below his gleaming Plaza Hotel penthouse. The women are hot, the confrontations boil over into sudden violence with no warning and the chases and shoot-outs demonstrate careful and competent staging. Worth a look for late 80s / early 90s gangster flick fans.