Abel Ferrara’s raw, neon-soaked masterpiece still feels like a gunshot in the face 35 years later.

Christopher Walken is Frank White — a white-haired, soft-spoken kingpin freshly released from prison, determined to reclaim his empire and “give something back” to the city that chewed him up. He’s not loud or cartoonish; he’s eerily calm, polite even, and that makes every murder feel colder. Walken’s performance is hypnotic — half philosopher, half predator — delivering lines like “I never killed anyone that didn’t deserve it” with the same gentle tone he’d use to order coffee.

The supporting cast is stacked: David Caruso as the idealistic young cop who wants Frank gone yesterday, Victor Argo as the veteran detective who’s seen too much, Wesley Snipes and Giancarlo Esposito as rival dealers who underestimate the man they’re crossing, and Laurence Fishburne chewing scenery as the volatile Jimmy Jump. Every scene crackles with tension — no one trusts anyone, and everyone knows someone’s going to die.

Ferrara shoots New York like it’s bleeding: Times Square’s grimy 80s glow, graffiti-covered subway cars, rain-slicked streets lit by sodium lamps. The violence is sudden, ugly, and unglamorous — drive-by shootings, point-blank executions, a massacre in a crack den that feels like a war crime. Yet there’s a strange, tragic poetry running underneath: Frank genuinely believes he’s a benefactor, funding hospitals while stacking bodies.

The final act is pure nihilism — a bloodbath in a subway station and a haunting, wordless walk through Times Square that leaves you gutted. No redemption, no tidy moral. Just a man who wanted to be king… and a city that refused to let him.

One of the most uncompromising crime films of the era — stylish, brutal, morally murky, and impossible to shake.

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