King of New York Reviews

Back in the 90's, I was a huge fan of Abel Ferrara's work and, back then, I spent a lot of time tracking down his movies. Indeed, Ferrara has never been an easy director but I always found his movies really mesmerizing. However, all the movies he directed during the last 10-15 years were more alienating than fascinating to watch which is just too bad. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, it was with this movie that Ferrara finally managed to reach a wider audience. To be honest, it is not really a ground-breaking gangster feature but there was still a lot to enjoy here. Indeed, what I enjoyed the most was probably the really dark and gloomy mood, definitely a trademark in Ferrara's work. Furthermore, it is always neat when Christopher Walken finally gets the opportunity to play the lead and only him could play such a demented drug lord without sounding completely ridiculous. Anyway, 2 years after making this feature, Ferrara would come up with ‘Bad Lieutenant’ which would be one of my all-time favorite movies. To conclude, even though it might not be a masterpiece, I thought it was pretty good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Abel Ferrara's work.