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So, their whole big plan (with 30,000 cops in New York, it’s a wonder nobody thought of this previously) is to send an undercover agent to infiltrate Nino’s cartel, the Cash Money Brothers. Problem is, their choice is Pookie (Chris Rock), an inherently gentle but mentally unbalanced former crackhead who is a personal friend of Scotty’s. As you can imagine, the operation goes tits-up almost immediately, claiming the lives of several cops and leading to deep divisions between Stone and his team. The Mayor is displeased, and the press is still doing whatever it is you do on a field day. So everyone is taken off the case and New York’s Finest just give up.

Because, you know, that would happen.

Meanwhile, Nino spends his crack money throwing lavish parties where he screens Scarface for his friends. He giggles about how Tony Montana’s mistake was buying his own hype and believing he was too smart to get caught. So of course, Nino buys his own hype and believes he’s too smart to get caught, making many of the same dumb decisions as his idol. This splits the team, setting the Cash Money Brothers against each other. Scotty and Nick decide to take advantage of this and go rogue, forging a deal with a rival gang, and setting in motion a plan to take Nino out from the inside.

None of this is groundbreaking, and some of it - as you’ve no doubt noticed - is downright cliché. The story overall is unremarkable, resembling just about every other episode of NYPD Blue ever made. As if to compensate for this, the film starts with a flyover of Manhattan, backed by an audio montage of radio announcers describing the literal decline of Western civilization. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, crack is whack, the economy is tanking, cats and dogs are indeed cohabitating. It’s a little heavy handed, to the point where whenever Ice-T pauses to lecture someone about selling crack to his “own people,” you almost expect him to turn to the camera and say “Knowledge is half the battle. Word.”

But somehow there’s more to it than that. What makes New Jack City better than Scarface is that it has a genuine message about a genuinely troubling problem, and the people involved with the film seem honestly invested in it.

This is Van Peebles’ first time behind the camera and while the remainder of his career has not been particularly interesting, this was clearly a very personal movie for him. And unlike Scarface, most of the characters in New Jack are utterly memorable. Snipes begins a solid, decade long run of super stardom here, as unforgettable as Pacino without needing to go so far over the top to do so. Chris Rock makes a perfect crackhead - he’s not funny - he’s tragic, and it works. Ice-T plays to type, and Judd Nelson essentially plays Bender from The Breakfast Club after 10 unrewarding years as an underpaid inner city cop dealing with reverse racism and recovering from a crippling paint huffing addiction.

And he’s absolutely goddamn perfect.

This is what was missing from Scarface - even a shred of humanity. New Jack City is a clichéd, preachy, paint-by-numbers movie that might have been immediately forgotten except for the fact you can’t forget any of the people IN it. I could have been an hour longer and I still would have watched the whole thing, because I enjoyed watching these people go through the motions, as many times as I’ve seen the same thing before. The best part is, Nino’s love of Scarface led to a whole generation of real life rappers also embracing the movie, and also completely missing the point as well. With the inevitable remake on the horizon, it’s too late for De Palma, but whoever ends up directing it could learn a thing or two from New Jack City.

Knowledge is half the battle. Word.

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