Sugar Hill replays an oldie but goodieSugar Hill replays an oldie but goodieby Alan Sepinwall It also applies to Sugar Hill, a new crime drama reuniting Wesley Snipes with his New Jack City screenwriter, Barry Michael Cooper. The film feels like someone threw the screenplays for The Godfather, New Jack City, and assorted gangster films into a blender and hit frappZ. It's pure formula all the way through. However, it's good formula. Cooper borrowed the best elements of early '70s blaxploitation flicks in New Jack, and he uses the best parts of The Godfather here. The bare bones of the plot are a near-carbon copy of The Godfather Part III, as Harlem drug lord Romello Scuggs (Snipes) tries to retire to a respectable life. The interplay between Romello and his torpedo of a brother Raynathan (The Five Heartbeats' Michael Wright) is very reminiscent of Al Pacino and James Caan, but the performers bring enough of their own style to make the relationship work on its own terms. Snipes gives a confident yet reserved star performance and Wright goes beyond the typical psychotic theatrics to show the underlying pain that makes Raynathan behave the way he does. The real surprise performer is Clarence Williams III, who will forever be remembered as Link from TV's The Mod Squad. As Romello and Ray's drug-addicted father, Williams exudes a quiet but frightening power -- you can't take your eyes off of him whenever he appears. Much of the credit for the film's performances must go to director Leon Ichaso (Crossover Dreams), who even manages to make Abe "Fish" Vigoda a credible old mobster. Ichaso faced the daunting task of filming the movie in nearly half the time given most features, but none of Sugar Hill feels overly rushed. It's a variation on an old theme, but it's a good old theme and a fairly compelling variation. INTERVIEW The cold lemon chicken was slightly inedible and the crowd at the Four Seasons noisy, but Leon Ichaso and Michael Wright were happy. Snow kept coming down, furthering the possibility that they would get a good night's sleep instead of having to fly to Boston to do more interviews to promote Sugar Hill, which Wright starred in and Ichaso directed. It's not that they don't like talking about the film -- they were just very tired (and hungry, once they gave up on the chicken). But once real food arrived, both had plenty to say, both about the film and about the society they tried to reflect in it. "It was originally called Skeezer," recalled Ichaso, "and it was a love story between Romello and Melissa (Theresa Randle). But eventually, it became the story of the Scuggs' family, with the love story in the background." Wright interjected. "But it's interesting, because the film still is a love story, only it's about another kind of love. It's about filial love -- sibling love gone awry. It's about love as it's represented in the tableau of the urban black American family. It's a metaphor, actually, for the decay in the urban black family." The streets of Harlem (where half the movie was filmed) showed signs of that decay. "In Harlem," said Ichaso, "to get into certain neighborhoods, we had to get permission from the criminal element.? And once, during the shooting of a scene, a man threw a naked lady out the window, and she landed in a garbage pile on the street. It was frightening. Another time there was a man with a shotgun on the set." When asked what they were trying to accomplish with Sugar Hill, Ichaso and Wright answered without hesitation. "[Young people] need a wake-up call," explained Wright. "Hopefully, they'll look at this film and see it as a cautionary tale of what not to do. Because it certainly deglorifies drugs and deglamorizes violence. What's happening to the Scuggs family [in the film] is happening to the black family in America." Ichaso summed it up the best. "Hopefully, the film will show that you don't have to go out in a blaze of glory to be somebody. It might be better to be somebody by staying alive."
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