King of New York

Reviewed by:
Paul Ulane

As with Scarface, you don’t have to be a rapper to appreciate this murderous rampage through the coke trade featuring Christopher Walken and early performances by Laurence “Back Then It Was Larry” Fishburne and Wesley Snipes. But great movies don’t always beget great DVDs, and King of New York really only sports a pair of features worth your time. Director Abel Ferrara brings life to the usually snooze-inducing commentary track feature, spinning meandering tales about the cast and crew and boasting that his lighting “separates the men from the boys.” The interesting “A Short Film About the Long Career of Abel Ferrara” also provides laughs, lounging with a number of colleagues as they reveal amusing anecdotes about the eccentric director. But the remaining supplements appear thrown together, including the portrait of Schoolly D—the rapper whom the movie was based on—which drags on longer than Ja Rule’s career. A solid companion to a fun flick, but not the royal edition it deserves.

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