Never Die Alone (2004)
Directed by Ernest Dickerson
Written by James Gibson
Starring DMX, David Arquette, Michael Ealy, Clifton Powell
Release Date March 26th, 2004
Published March 25th, 2004
For rapper DMX, Hollywood has been difficult to navigate. Stuck with B-movie plots and co-stars (Steven Seagal, Jet Li), DMX has managed to show raw potential but little else. The most notable things about his film career thus far are his multi-platinum soundtrack albums that have been better than the films they accompany. Now, however, teamed with director Ernest Dickerson in Never Die Alone, DMX gets an opportunity to realize some of that raw potential.
DMX stars as King David, a bad-ass drug dealer who has returned to New York to settle old debts and reestablish his home. After ten years on the West Coast rolling up huge amounts of cash selling heroin to starlets, David has more than enough cash to pay off New York's top drug dealer Mr. Moon (Clifton Powell). The deal is he will give the money to Moon's top thug Mike (Michael Ealy from Barbershop) and once Moon has the cash, King is free.
Young Mike however, has other plans. Mike and the King have a history that King doesn't know about. A dangerous secret leads to Mike stabbing King. As Mike makes his escape, a writer named Paul (David Arquette) witnesses the stabbing and runs to the aid of King. As Paul drives King to the hospital, the dying man pledges all of his possessions to Paul with the caveat that Paul uses them to locate King's son. At the hospital King dies and Paul is left to put the pieces of King's life back together with the audio tapes King left behind in a hollowed out bible.
It's convenient that Paul happens to be a writer living in the King's old neighborhood for research on a gritty crime novel. Not many writers are lucky enough to have a gritty urban crime story fall into their lap like that. Paul is merely a convenient device through which to tell King's cold, hard, thug story. The King's tapes take us back to when he left for LA and eventually why he ran, which sets up the main plot of the film.
The scenes in LA are a frightening examination of the kind of sociopath it takes to be a cold hard killer. King uses the drugs and money he lifted off of Moon to wine and dine a Hollywood actress (Jennifer Sky), willing to front drugs to her TV co-stars and a young med student (Reagan Gomez-Preston). King met the college girl at her job as a waitress and with the cool cunning of a snake he gets into her bed and his drugs into her veins. Watching the way King slowly deconstructs the once promising student reminded me of a moment from the movie Fight Club where Edward Norton maims Jared Leto in a fight and coolly explains that he felt like destroying something beautiful.
Many critics are faulting Director Ernest Dickerson's choice of visual style. Dickerson, the former cinematographer for Spike Lee, abuses his film stock with scratches and washed out color to give the film a classic seventies Blaxploitation look. The look evokes that early seventies feel but the story is a modern hard edged urban noir in the vein of Sugar Hill or New Jack City. All that is missing is a Wesley Snipes cameo to pass the torch of urban menace to DMX.
That said there is more than one way to look at King's portrayal. On the one hand, this is an unglamorous end that teaches, if you live hard you die hard. On the other hand, DMX's powerful, charismatic cool could earn cult status among those predisposed to admire such things. DMX is powerful, his tattooed, muscled presence and serial killer mentality is as intimidating as a horror film villain should be. His charm and charisma is so enticing you would admire him if the film didn't demonstrate what a bastard he really is. This is DMX's best performance thus far though too many more roles like it will lead to typecasting. For now though DMX wears the hardcore gangster persona like a perfectly fit Italian suit and that comfort is part of his charm.
For young Michael Ealy, Never Die Alone is a chance to establish some dramatic cache to match his well liked comic performance in Barbershop and he does a terrific job. Ealy's heartfelt sadness and tortured existence is the perfect counterbalance to DMX's cold, sociopathic, and charismatic performance. Though the film’s twist near the end calls logic into question, Ealy sells it well and we accept it because he does. David Arquette is far less successful in his role as plot device. Arquette's Paul is entirely a function of the plot and never an interesting participant.
Ernest Dickerson has yet to make the masterpiece that I'm sure his former protégé Spike Lee is expecting him to make. But, Never Die Alone is a step in the right direction. Expect Dickerson to do something spectacular very soon. For now, Never Die Alone is a terrific genre piece, a gritty urban drama worthy of comparison with other great gangster films.
