King Of New York Review

• 24th Jun 2012

If I had have known the introduction of David Caruso’s  bumbling, surprisingly likable and actually somewhat tough cop Dennis Gilley would have been the first redeeming part of this film I just may have left it on the dusty shelf by it’s lonely self. Shocked that I hadn’t yet been been acquainted with a New York set mobster film starring cult favourites Christopher Walken and Steve Buscemi, I put my ignorance of it’s existence down to the fact that this little gem was released a mere 7 months after Scorsese’s ground breaking virtuoso Goodfellas. Thus I suspected it to be a great film that was merely blanketed and blocked from view behind the cloud of excellence protruding from Scorsese’s work of art. I was wrong.

Opening sequences present to us our ‘King’ as he is released from his prison cell back into the big bad streets of New York City.  Intermittent with crazy mobster tomfoolery we see shots of Walken’s silent bad self gazing slightly off screen with an intensity that one can only presume is to guide us to understand that he means business.

In a nutshell he’s back to save the day and he don’t need no help from the law. He is the law….yada yada yada…

Although the concept of ethnic division within a city’s underbelly along with the uprising of a downtrodden mob boss isn’t by a long shot at all original, it has definitely given rise to many a masterpiece over the past 40 years.  Unfortunately with stilted, patronising, over-thought direction at times making the viewer feel not only stupid and incapable of comprehension it also gives the feeling that they’re part of a film set rather than part of another world.  This film really missed the mark.

Walken, the genius that he is, made the most of what he was given. Buscemi was simply not given enough reign and as mentioned before Caruso, the man who has seemingly ever since terrorised the Miami CSI division with the very worst investigative homicidal lines in all of history…was actually sensational. Go figure!

King of New York.  Not for me sorry.

Kath Haling