PHILM: NEVER DIE ALONE is pretty hard to argue with; a cautionary noir from the just over that edge where pulp becomes true underground. Slumming with David Arquette, we're told "This isn't a rap video. This isn't a Tarantino movie." And it's not. It's smarter than the former and smart about the latter . . . post-pulp, maybe, having a point above and beyond the satisfaction of brilliantly executed formula.
It felt at times like director Ernest Dickerson was projecting Goines' novel onto the screen behind a rough matte finish, true to the feel of tough scenes recounted on inexpensive paper. I like to think this was a self-aware, formal acknowledgement of source material that deliberately signalled transcence of both the excesses and limitations of the "pulp" genre or label. I don't know Goines' work first hand however, and I do need to get my eyes checked, so perhaps that's just my own projection.
In any case, Never Die Alone doesn't flinch and doesn't pose. It doesn't shrink from offending or tell the audience how to feel. DMX is really good (scary as hell) in the role of King David, but the film is more about the responses that Michael Ealy and David Arquette's characters have, respectively, to his direct brutality and brutal life story. The audience is left to sort out the details of those responses in all their desparate and often unspoken difficulty, and that makes for a brilliant film.
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