Perhaps.
Perhaps not! The panel is unstumped! The movie in question is New Jack City, a cops n’ robbers drug dealers flick. It did pretty good business back in '91. Technically it was released by Warner Bros., who had been releasing gangster movies since the thirties, but was still low budget and independent enough to get a screening at Sundance.
Here’s the breakdown of the clues:
- was the movie named for the music or the music named for the movie?
New Jack City starts out in the late '80s, around the time Janet Jackson was releasing some of the first examples of new jack swing to America’s ears. There’s plenty of new jack swing on the soundtrack, and Keith Sweat even makes a cameo. But the popularity of new jack swing took off after the movie. New Jack isn’t really defined in the movie, except where a police superior is telling a couple of loose cannons that he needs some New Jack Cops. But the cops never really act like a fusion of the rhythms and production techniques of hip hop and dance-pop with the urban contemporary sound of R&B.
- it’s like a season or two of a later TV show, but dumber
So here is a clever and charismatic drug kingpin taking over a housing project tower, supported by interesting gang members who are family or are like family. They spread their poison for great profits but much injury to the community. But the dissolution of the criminal enterprise is sown with self-created problems. Set against them are some rugged cops who are restricted by rules but don’t mind bending them to bring down a drug kingpin, even using a drug addict as an intelligence asset.
I dunno, it’s set in Harlem instead of Baltimore, but it reminded me of The Wire.
Oh, “dumber”! The Wire was concerned about stuff like the Fourth Amendment when it came to making a criminal case to take down the bad guy. Here, for instance, a cop sneaks in through an evil bathroom window, finds a 3.5" diskette labeled “financial” and yoinks it.
- the first-time director, despite being handsome, takes a minor role in this movie
Mario Van Peebles, son of blaxploitation legend Melvin Van Peebles, had directed some TV, including 21 Jump Street (this was the tangential connection mentioned upthread), and this was his first movie both behind and in front of the camera. He plays the superior cop bedevilled by his insubordinate subordinates.
- a stand up comedian does some impressive (if unlikely) ACTING
Chris Rock, actor and comedian, looks scrawny and tortured as he suffers under his addiction to the rock (no relation).
- Of the duo, they are constantly auditioning for the role of bad cop, so they’re both not great
Pimp and rapper Ice-T and “criminal” member of the Breakfast Club Judd Nelson can’t do the good cop/bad cop thing because they’re such loose cannons and so on.
Projects can be pronounced both ways.
- This timepiece-sporting nightclub fixture brings some flava to a tale of public enemies
Flava Flav (of Public Enemy) shows up in a cameo. There are a lot of “oh, that guy!” guys in this movie.
- The factory floor features an unusual kind of uniform
Because the hardworking laborers charged with putting lots of crack cocaine into lots of little vials can’t be trusted not to bring their product home from work, everyone works topless and pantsless. (Trouserless to British viewers.) This is very interesting, especially to young movie viewers watching at home who happened to catch the movie on a free HBO weekend and their parents are asleep upstairs.
- It’s not '32 Scarface or '83 Scarface, but one character wishes he was an improved model of Tony Montana. Scarface without a scar
This would be Wesley Snipes’ character Nino, who watches Scarface over and over on a projector at home, making sure he won’t make the same mistakes. Hubris!
You’re up, Gordon!
