And they are back...Throwback Thursday!! I figured to get you back on the good foot, I would give you a throwback sure to knock you off your feet! What is it you ask...New Jack City!!New Jack City is a 1991 crime-thriller/neo-noir film starring Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Mario Van Peebles, Judd Nelson and Chris Rock. Snipes stars as Nino Brown, a rising drug dealer and crime lord in New York City during the crack epidemic. Ice-T plays a detective who vows to stop Nino's criminal activity by going undercover to work for Nino's gang.
The screenplay was co-written by journalist-turned-screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper, who also scripted 1994's Above The Rim, and Sugar Hill, which also starred Snipes. Cooper is the first African-American screenwriter in history to not only have two films produced in one year--Sugar Hill was released on February 25th, 1994 by Beacon-20th Century Fox Pictures, and "Above The Rim" was released on March 23rd,1994, by New Line Cinema--but a month apart from each other.
This is one of those movies that you becomed glued to the screen because the plot is so enticing. It's a film to remember.
The story revolved around the 20th anniversary of the 1967 riots in Detroit, and in its wake, the rise of crack cocaine gangs in the mid-to-late 1980s, like Young Boys Inc., and the Chambers Brothers. Some of the most memorable lines in the film were ad-libbed by the actors - especially Ice-T and Wesley Snipes - encouraged by director Van Peebles to improvise in a free-flowing naturalistic style.
It received a favorable reception by film critics for its cast, storyline and soundtrack. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars of four, writing:
"Truffaut once said it was impossible to make an anti-war movie, because the war sequences would inevitably be exciting and get the audience involved on one side or the other. It is almost as difficult to make an anti-drug movie, since the lifestyle and money of the drug dealers looks like fun, at least until they're killed. This movie pulls off that tricky achievement. Nino, who looks at the dead body of Scarface and laughs, does not get the last laugh."
"Truffaut once said it was impossible to make an anti-war movie, because the war sequences would inevitably be exciting and get the audience involved on one side or the other. It is almost as difficult to make an anti-drug movie, since the lifestyle and money of the drug dealers looks like fun, at least until they're killed. This movie pulls off that tricky achievement. Nino, who looks at the dead body of Scarface and laughs, does not get the last laugh."
And not to forget it would do quite well as it pertain to the box-office numbers/dollars, considering it was produced on an estimated $8,000,000 budget. The film initially premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 1991, before being released nationally on March 8, 1991; it grossed $7,039,622 during its opening weekend. It became the highest grossing independent film of 1992, grossing a total of $47,624,253 domestically.
Not only would the movie itself do well the but the soundtrack would be a hit on the market as well. To this day one can watch this movie and probably quote it word for word. This would be one of those movies that goes into your black classics collection.
Here are some classic scenes from the film:
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