NEW JACK CITY

Intended as an anti-drug statement, NEW JACK CITY tells about the drug war currently being waged in our cities. By setting the story in fictitious New Jack City during the years 1986-89, the film seeks to depict the destruction wrought by drugs in any of today’s cities.

The film focuses on Nino Brown, a ruthless mobster who takes over an apartment building to convert it into a fortress, where he makes and distributes a new derivative of crack. Opposing Nino is a police drug-fighting unit, headed by two undercover detectives, Paretti and Appleton.

Paretti and Appleton try to obtain evidence on Nino through a rehabilitated informant named Pookie, whom they equip with a miniature video camera to infiltrate the despot’s drug-making laboratory. Pookie gives in to the temptation of drugs, blows his cover and gets killed. Nino burns the operation to the ground so no evidence can be obtained.

Appleton and Paretti vow to bring Nino and his drug empire down. Even the black community confronts him about how he is killing his own. The senseless shootouts, gun battles and killings continue until Nino finally lands in court. When it appears that he will just do minimum time, a member of the community shoots Nino, shouting “Idolator!”

Closing comments inform the viewer that the plague of drugs which “motors the human soul on its course of spiritual destruction” must be stopped. A number Scriptures are used to reinforce this message. For instance, Nino quotes the “Am I my brother’s keeper?” verse (Genesis 4:9) to cement his troops together, but the “brothers” later wise up to how it is used against them, when Nino declares, “All the world is mine!”

Scripture is again used when Nino’s drug-induced dementia leads him to utter, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6), only the reference is to man and drugs, not man and woman. Scriptures, though, are used to denounce drugs, i.e. the classic paraphrase of Job 4:8, “you reap what you sow.” 1 Corinthians 6:10 also appears more than once, indicating whom will not inherit the kingdom of God.

NEW JACK CITY is designed to be a hard-hitting portrayal of inner-city drug life, which accounts for the 180 obscenities, graphic murder, fornication, and substance abuse. The film, however, is not designed to show that drugs are a “black” problem, but skirts the issue by casting all characters as black. To its credit, NEW JACK CITY aims to show that the drug trade revolves around the idolizing of money, which only generates violence, and, as the film so clearly shows, if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.

If these characters would live Scripture like they quote it, then they would see that God is the master and determiner of your life, that there is a transforming power when you can be satisfied with what you have, and that peace before God is more important than any position of influence.