New Jack City (1991) on Netflix
Nino Brown and the Cash Money Brothers control Harlem's crack trade. They take over the Carter apartment complex. Suspended detective Scotty Appleton goes undercover in the gang.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.7/1042,837 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Harlem, Nino Brown and the Cash Money Brothers take over the crack trade once the drug reaches the streets. Nino's crew includes his childhood friend Gee Money, his enforcer Duh Duh Duh Man, Nino's girlfriend Selina Thomas, Keisha, and Selina's cousin Kareem Akbar, a former bank teller. They push the landlord and tenants out of the Carter apartment complex and run the building as their base. Detective Scotty Appleton, working undercover, sets up a buy from stick-up kid Pookie, who bolts with the money; Appleton shoots him in the leg and is suspended. Stone, who runs the police operation against the gang, is pressed by Commissioner Fred R. Price. Appleton volunteers to go inside as a dealer and is paired with Nick Peretti.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about New Jack City (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The screenplay for New Jack City was originally written as The Godfather: Part III, with a protagonist who sold heroin rather than cocaine, according to Carl Hart, who corresponded with the writer Thomas Lee Wright about it.
- Made for an estimated $8,000,000, New Jack City became the highest-grossing independent film of 1991, taking $7,039,622 in its opening weekend and $47,624,253 domestically in total.
- The film's influence spread beyond cinema: the Cash Money Brothers gang inspired the name Cash Money Records, Lil Wayne's Tha Carter albums are named after The Carter Complex, Lil Wayne and Tyga called themselves Young Nino, and the wrestler New Jack took his ring name from the film.
- Thomas Lee Wright based his script on interviews with people from Little Italy in New York and on the story of Nicky Barnes, the black kingpin who modeled his Harlem criminal organization after the Mafia.
- Barry Michael Cooper's rewrite was adapted from his December 1987 Village Voice cover story "Kids Killing Kids: New Jack City Eats Its Young," about Detroit's drug war, which recalled the 20th anniversary of the city's 1967 riots and the rise of crack gangs such as Young Boys Inc. and the Chambers Brothers.
