NEW JACK CITY (1991) **1/2 Mario Van Peebles does a tremendous job of making the Black crack underworld look and feel like it should. Crack, it turns out, was a phenomenon born of underclass economic desperation caused by Reaganomics, materialism, punk style nihilism, and Black culture the way they found it. It all looks right: the club, the clothes, the crack dens...it's easy stuff to get wrong but Mario gets it right. It's scary, you don't want to be any of these people; least of all the addicts, but not the ones making millions on the edge, and not the avenging angel cops, either. There are lots of cool actors wandering around (Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Ice-T, Eek-A-Mouse, Mario himself, Judd Nelson-how'd he get in?) shooting things, but none of them are nearly as compelling as the story line or production. They have moments, but they all-especially Judd-experience difficulties staying in character. None of them is any more consistent, for example, than Vanessa Williams as a machine-gun totin' assassination mama (not entirely dissin', she's a lot better than you might expect). To make matters worse, about the time they're all chillin' and watchin' Scarface, this movie decides to do the same thing. It can't figure out where to do, but it's got all this credibility and momentum, so it just keeps blowing itself up bigger and bigger until it feels obligated to overtly make sweeping social statements that most viewers could have found anyway. So, I'm backin' the execution and analysis, I'm just saying that some stories are strong enough to point out things about themselves.
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