Deep Cover. (15.)
Directed by Bill Duke. 1992.
Starring Laurence Fishburne, Jeff Goldblum, Victoria Dillard, Charles Martin Smith, Sydney Lassick, Clarence Williams III. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection. 103 mins.
This is a film about a cop who goes undercover as a drug dealer in the LA underground that wouldn't pass muster on the streets. The undercover cop drama demands gritty realism: pained, mumblefish, so-cold-you-can-see-your-breath authenticity. But there is something in the way Duke's film moves and sounds and looks that is just a touch too smooth, too straight, too glitzy to be street. Yeah, but so what? Sod the street. It's got lousy taste in everything and has earned a day off as the universal arbiter of merit. Deep Cover is a dapper little number, smart and insightful and with two of Hollywood's finest screen actors at the top of their game.
First up is Fishburne as a misfit cop who is arm-twisted into going undercover on the streets of LA to root out the people moving drugs into the city. He's a cop on the edge, but Fishburne isn't going to let that get him worked up. He's a driven, conflicted man, filled with rage yet Fishburne (going by the name Larry here for the last time) never feels the need to express that through histrionics, by punching out a fridge or howling in rage. Even in the moments when his character has lost it, been pushed beyond endurance, there's a level-headedness to his anger. And this restraint makes it all so much more powerful. What a leading man he could've been.
Opposite him is Goldberg playing a lawyer, called David Jason, who is trying to remain respectable while slumming it in the drug trade. He's the figure Fishburne identifies as his point of entry into the cartels. There's nobody quite like Goldblum, probably because not only is he the only on-screen performer who can mix laidback assurance with twitchy anxiety, but he's the only one to even think that might be a workable proposition. There's not a moment of calm in David Jason existence, yet for the most part, he is absolutely fine with that. He makes a very odd double act with Fishburne. They are both giving exceptional performances but you never quite see how they would become partners. They don't belong together; stood next to each other in their designer gear they look like a failed Miami Vice audition.
Duke's film isn't big on credibility. The grit seems to be sprayed on and the plot progresses a little too easily. But you overlook that because what it does have is great performances, stand out scenes and a marvellous sane take on the hypocrisy of the War On Drugs. The script, by Michael Tolkin and Henry Bean, really spells out, perhaps a little too clearly, the cynicism of an approach that mostly criminalises the victims and lower-rung employee, the gig economy aspect, while leaving the lynchpins of the trade untouched.
Extras
New interview with director Bill Duke
Directed by Bill Duke. 1992.
Starring Laurence Fishburne, Jeff Goldblum, Victoria Dillard, Charles Martin Smith, Sydney Lassick, Clarence Williams III. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection. 103 mins.
This is a film about a cop who goes undercover as a drug dealer in the LA underground that wouldn't pass muster on the streets. The undercover cop drama demands gritty realism: pained, mumblefish, so-cold-you-can-see-your-breath authenticity. But there is something in the way Duke's film moves and sounds and looks that is just a touch too smooth, too straight, too glitzy to be street. Yeah, but so what? Sod the street. It's got lousy taste in everything and has earned a day off as the universal arbiter of merit. Deep Cover is a dapper little number, smart and insightful and with two of Hollywood's finest screen actors at the top of their game.
First up is Fishburne as a misfit cop who is arm-twisted into going undercover on the streets of LA to root out the people moving drugs into the city. He's a cop on the edge, but Fishburne isn't going to let that get him worked up. He's a driven, conflicted man, filled with rage yet Fishburne (going by the name Larry here for the last time) never feels the need to express that through histrionics, by punching out a fridge or howling in rage. Even in the moments when his character has lost it, been pushed beyond endurance, there's a level-headedness to his anger. And this restraint makes it all so much more powerful. What a leading man he could've been.
Opposite him is Goldberg playing a lawyer, called David Jason, who is trying to remain respectable while slumming it in the drug trade. He's the figure Fishburne identifies as his point of entry into the cartels. There's nobody quite like Goldblum, probably because not only is he the only on-screen performer who can mix laidback assurance with twitchy anxiety, but he's the only one to even think that might be a workable proposition. There's not a moment of calm in David Jason existence, yet for the most part, he is absolutely fine with that. He makes a very odd double act with Fishburne. They are both giving exceptional performances but you never quite see how they would become partners. They don't belong together; stood next to each other in their designer gear they look like a failed Miami Vice audition.
Duke's film isn't big on credibility. The grit seems to be sprayed on and the plot progresses a little too easily. But you overlook that because what it does have is great performances, stand out scenes and a marvellous sane take on the hypocrisy of the War On Drugs. The script, by Michael Tolkin and Henry Bean, really spells out, perhaps a little too clearly, the cynicism of an approach that mostly criminalises the victims and lower-rung employee, the gig economy aspect, while leaving the lynchpins of the trade untouched.
Extras
New interview with director Bill Duke
- AFI Conservatory seminar from 2018 featuring Duke and actor Laurence Fishburne, moderated by film critic Elvis Mitchell
- New conversation between film scholars Racquel J. Gates and Michael B. Gillespie about Deep Cover’s place within both the Black film boom of the early 1990s and the noir genre
- New conversation between scholar Claudrena N. Harold and professor, DJ, and podcaster Oliver Wang about the film’s title track and its importance to the history of hip-hop
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by Gillespie
- New cover illustration by Ngabo “El’Cesart” Desire
