Forgotten Gems: King of New York

Abel Ferrera's King of New York is a fascinating watch for me. It’s fascinating to sit back and take note of just how fascinated, how entranced I am with this film. I love other gangster films, but I wouldn’t say I’m entranced or even enchanted by them. That distinction is reserved for films like “Only God Forgives", “Melancholia”, “The Shining” or “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". That feeling of a spell being woven over me, of complete surrender, (Save for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, there is a common thread of substandardly paced films with an air of the supernatural). Goodfellas makes gangsterism detestable, but cool. Donnie Brasco makes it powerful, but tragic. New Jack City sexy but cruel, but King of New York explores gangsterdom as a drug fueled fever dream drenched in audacity that takes place in purgatory. Unlike any other Gangster portrayed on film, Ferrera's and frequent collaborator Nicholas St John's Frank White (Christopher Walken) is not just an ambitious, violent, ne'er do well in the vein of Tony Montana from “Scarface", but a similarly myopic ambitious, violent, ne'er do well whose ultimate ambition is to raise the profile and living conditions of the less fortunate along with hinself- If you're watching. What was interesting to me, was to wonder what and if the movie wanted to say something in particular about the ultimate effect of this kind of ambition, as well as to parse the places in which the movie functions as a white savior movie, and the ways in which it unconsciously (most likely) subverts that trope by merely unraveling in the way in which Ferrara films did at the time. So that if Frank’s ambition is at the heart of all this self and outward destruction, is the ambition itself the root? Is it identity focused? Is it the intention behind the impetus? If his ambition is to help underserved communities and people, ultimately what does this say about white saviors?, or at least these are the thoughts that crossed my mind.

The underpinnings of the argument are not to be found in any overt finger-wagging, or plot points, but in implicit happenings and the natural outgrowth of thought that branches out fron underneath its groundwork. Namely by way of watching the police work. If there are enemies in this film, ( for my money there is not, there is simply Frank and New York) they are the police. Ferrara's film is not a glowing account of police work. Cops are not protectors, or saviors, or particularly heroic. For all intensive purposes they are a rival gang. Especially as headed by Dennis Gilley and co-chaired by Thomas Flanigan (played with furious agitation by David Caruso and Wesley Snipes as Flanigan??? ). I say headed by, not because Caruso is their actual leader - that would be Victo Argo's mostly level headed Roy Bishop, - but because it is Caruso who is their spiritual leader. They're dark Fletcher Christian leading them on (all bluster and fervor) into oblivion. The Police should be much more invested in everything Frank is, (opening hospitals, hiring diversely, doing their job with a directive that serves the community they have placed themselves in charge of through little more than will and nerve and whiteness ) they are not. They’re interested only in returning Frank to prison or placing him snugly in a body bag. Their police force is white hegemony with tokenism.

On the other hand, Frank is nearly the token in his own crew if not for whomever Steve Buscemi is. This dichotomy provides no neat answers to the questions posed earlier. This is not “American Gangster” a film that in my opinion took a aggravatingly simple moral position that philosophically sided most decidedly with its police, and aesthetically with its subject - It's an unrelentingly hyper-violent deconstruction if not a referendum against a very specificly capitalist contextualization of ambition (at least in the subtext) and a stubborn refusal to dive into moral superiority that finds an almost predestined path to futility that calls to mind the eye opening frankness of ecclesiastes 1:2

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?

4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.

7 All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.

8 All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.

9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.

11 There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.”

— Ecclesiastes ch 1:2

Savior? Martyr? Devil? Ferrara's film doesn't seem as interested to make a point (save that there is no point). King of New York is happy to let what unfolds..unfold. Its fascinating in a genre that many times wants to moralize, or lionize, or deconstruct the gangster. And yet, we are left with Frank White. Though not necessarily explicitly by action, White continually points out the decay of a system that preys on and discards those with the least opportunities, while preying on those very same folk himself. He is for lack of a better word a gangster of and for the people. He values them over what they produce. When two of his best men are thrown in jail his reaction is immediate and visceral. He is a paradox in a cinematic world of paradoxes. There is something extremely conflicted about a scene featuring a white man on the train with a woman, who ends up almost being mugged by atypical hollywood thugs, warns them with a gun, and then, rather than marking them for death, offers them a job. Almost the entirety of Frank’s consortium is composed of black people, and women. The depictions of them are both troubling and empowering. In one of the opening scenes, Frank returns home to a party wherein his associates greet him with adulation, and reports from the field. Once the commiseration is over, in a brief moment of vulnerability for both, Frank admits implicitly to being somewhat hurt he wasn't ’t visited in the can to his right hand man Jimmy (Laurence Fishburne in a wildly electrifying performance that I will get to in just a moment). Jimmy returns that vulnerability with a thoughtful response (the closest men of this mature are going to get to I miss you , and it hurts to much to see you like this) … “Who wants to see you in a cage”.

The scene is interesting both from the angle of vulnerability, and an example of the kind of hierarchical tokenism on display. A white man is at the head, but you dont necessarily feel his power as much as his leadership. He doesn't go around barking orders, or demeaning his own men and women, and he kills mostly white competition, but, he does order people. The film itself save for Jimmy does caricaturize more than it characterizes, and elements of white saviorism appear as a natural offshoot of their interactions. In any Scorcese gangster film, or Scarface, or New Jack City, there is always tension between characters in a gang. Conscious space, an unsure rift that exists caused not only the culture clashes, (Jews and Irish, blacks and Italians, who can be made and who can't, etc) and toxic masculinity on display in those worlds, but also by the ever present clouds of ambition, and the precipitation of paranoia. These things are present to a much lesser extent in King of New York, someone them altogether missing, it is unique. The bonds feel genuine, the loyalty authentic, the friendships durable. Which is why the one betrayal in the movie works as an effective surprise. There’s something about a Gangster film that feels almost rudderless, almost like a ponderance on gangsterdom rather than a structured essay that works for me. It could just be the way Ferrara films New York - dark, menacing, opulent. It could be the acting, Walken, Fishburne, and Caruso are on fire . Fishburne's death scene is among the most memorable in movie history.

A crescendo of coke fueled animosity conducted by movement for the actor, it’s another mesmerizing element of the film. After murdering one of the top cops from Roy Bishop's section under a train overpass, Fishburne's Jimmy is himself shot several times by David Caruso's Gilley. Fishburne immediately goes into hysterics which seems equal parts coke, stubborness, and animosity. Laughing, and laughing, and writhing in concert he goes on and on nearly unintelligible the whole way, mocking Caruso's friend's death, and by extension Caruso’s pain, maybe even his characters own life. Fishburne's dedication and commitment to his body right until the very moment Caruso shoots him in the head is something to behold. It is yet another example of the kind of spellbinding theater present in everything from the film's score to it’s set design. Whatever King of New York is or isn't, it's a film that sticks with me. I first watched it as a teen and haven't forgotten nearly a single moment in it since. Like the friendships in the movie, and good friendships period the movie is extremely durable and enduring. Quite possibly because like a good friend you could argue with it for hours, and find yourself loving it even more after all is said and done. Or maybe because you can write something like this about it that ultimately comes to not very much, and still feel its magic. Which maybe makes it like magic in the fact that maybe discovering or deconstructing exactly why it works, ruins the magic. Whatevever Abel Ferrera's kinetic tangerine dream film is, it is something so unique it was bound to never be a film everyone loves, but also not a film easily lost to those who do.