King of New York (1990)

There's a moment in King of New York where Christopher Walken is simply standing in a room, barely speaking, and you cannot take your eyes off him. That's not a trick. That's just what Walken does. And for a good stretch of this film, it's enough. More than enough, actually.

This is the first time I've seen Walken properly carrying a film as the lead, rather than doing his usual thing of parachuting into a supporting role and walking away with it. He plays Frank White, a drug kingpin freshly out of prison who seems to believe, with genuine conviction, that he can launder his soul through philanthropy. It's classic Walken delivered at full voltage: the whispery cadence, the unnerving stillness, that uncanny ability to make charm and menace feel like the same thing. He's magnetic. The trouble is, the film around him isn't always worthy of the performance.

Because here's the thing: Walken isn't even the best thing in King of New York. Laurence Fishburne is. Playing a detective wound so tight he's practically vibrating, Fishburne brings a righteous, simmering fury that crackles against Walken's cool in every scene they share. The contrast between them is the film's real engine, and whenever those two are orbiting each other, Abel Ferrara's movie hums with genuine electricity.

Ferrara shoots New York with the kind of grimy, nocturnal love that makes the city feel like a character in its own right. This is a dangerous, alive, pre-cleaned-up Manhattan: all neon reflections on wet tarmac and shadows that seem to follow people around. The cinematography has a noir-ish flair to it that suits the material perfectly, and the soundtrack, moody synth threading through jazz, adds real texture to the whole thing. I've enjoyed Ferrara's work before, having spent time with The Addiction, and that same obsession with moral rot beneath a stylish surface is very much present here.

The car chase through Manhattan is the film's action centrepiece, and it earns its reputation. It's raw and chaotic and filmed with real physical stakes. No safety net, no digital smoothing. You feel it in your chest. Sequences like that remind you what's possible when filmmakers commit to practical momentum.

But the plot. God, the plot. The script genuinely wants you to root for Frank White as some kind of tragic antihero, a man whose crimes are supposedly offset by his grand, vague designs on doing good. There's a hospital subplot that's meant to anchor his "noble" ambitions, but the moral logic never holds together for more than a few scenes at a stretch. You're watching a man order murders and manipulate everyone in his orbit, and the film keeps nudging you to feel conflicted about it. Fair enough, morally complex crime fiction is a perfectly valid thing. But the complexity here feels less like a deliberate choice and more like the script not quite knowing what it believes. The pieces don't add up to a coherent argument about Frank, or about crime, or about New York. They add up to a mood.

And look, sometimes a mood is enough. King of New York has atmosphere to burn. It's loud and bold and confident in its own style, even when the substance underneath is shakier than it should be. I came away admiring the performance and the visual craft far more than I believed the story. That's not a fatal flaw, but it does keep the film from landing where it's clearly aiming.

Three stars.

Call it very good pulp rather than great cinema. Watch it for Walken's stillness, for Fishburne's fury, for the chase, for the texture of that city at night. Just don't go in expecting the moral threads to tie themselves off neatly, because they won't. Treat it like a fever dream, intense and stylish and slightly unhinged, and you'll have a fine time with it.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1990  | Watched: 2026-04-13

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