Racism as for criminals

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2009)

This film is not particularly interesting as for the story which is that of a gangster who is captured by the police along with thirty members of his family, and decides to help the police corner the whole drug dealing system in New York, and particularly the rotten cops who are getting some kickback money for closing their eyes. It is not either the case of a clean cop who arrests all those gangsters and then turns lawyer and takes as his first client the fink of a gangster he arrested first and has his prison term reduced to 17 years instead of 70. The real point here is that this gangster is black. He becomes the dominant drug dealer in New York in the early 70s. He uses direct buying in Vietnam during the last war years and has that drug flown to him in military cargo planes, the last time in the coffins of dead soldiers. The only interesting thing here is the fact that he is black and no one can believe that famous gangster who no one knows can be black in New York, in spite of the ethnic and racial cleansing practiced by the mafia. But the film proves nothing, except that those who are anti-black racists are also anti-jew racists. Anti-Semitism goes along with racial racism. But that is nothing new under the sun. The film is well done and shows cruelly well how a cop from New Jersey has better not come and hunt on the land of the police of New York, on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, or whatever. But that still does not make it a great film. A good film indeed but flat as for the plot.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID