Deep Cover (1992)

Thanks for the memories!

A Masterpiece!

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie has it all! Pace, action, sex and violence, but wrapped up in a plot that carries you along all the way. The good guy(Fishburne)is really screwed up and you end up really liking the bad guy (Goldblum). Real movie buffs will love the Hitchcockesque scene cuts and fans of beat music will not be disappointed. This is one of my favorite films - it's dark, both visually & theatrically, moody & (in my opinion) thought provoking. In no way does the film glamorize drug dealing or drug use, instead showing the consequences of both. I've always been a sucker for a film with a narrative & this has some very clever lines - it comes across as being more intelligent than the run of the mill drugs/cop/gangster film. It has it's moments of violence - but that's going to be par for the course on this type of film. It's grainy, dark feel adds to the overall "depressing" feeling & adds atmosphere. It has an almost "film noir" feel about - if that's possible for a color movie.Unlike many other films that have taken the undercover cop story and pursued it in a typical fashion, "Deep Cover" takes a tense, intimate approach. Director Bill Duke creates a quiet masterpiece casting Laurence Fishburne as a by-the-book cop assigned to infiltrate a major cocaine empire in Los Angeles. His connection inside is Jeff Goldblum (in probably his best performance ever), a supposed clean-shaven Jewish lawyer who secretly longs for the thrill of a gangster's life while trying to maintain a family at home. Duke does not glorify these drug dealers as Scarface-type millionaires who revel in money & mansions but rather paints them as quiet, suspicious businessmen who hold no true alliances to anyone while nesting in pool halls & boxing gyms. There is never a moment where any of these characters are seeking fame & fortune. Instead, they are looking for recognition of their power over both their friends & foes. Fishburne soon finds himself sucked into the dealer's life against his will, doing whatever he can to infiltrate the organization despite how far "deep" he's involved in it (as opposed to the cliché that the cop decides he likes being a drug dealer). The soundtrack is only a stereo mix, but it's a pretty good stereo mix, with lots of left/right detail and the Rap style music still works surprisingly well.Overall rating: 9 out of 10.

It's 1972 Cleveland. As a child, Russell Stevens Jr. witnesses his drug addicted father get killed. He vows never to touch drugs. 20 years later, he (Laurence Fishburne) is a beat cop in Cincinnati. He is recruited into going undercover for the DEA by Special Agent Gerald Carver. In L.A., he is going after importer Anton Gallegos and his uncle south American politician Hector Gúzman. He connects with street dealer Eddie Dudley who gets him arrested. Drug lawyer David Jason (Jeff Goldblum) takes his case and introduces him to Gallegos.Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum are good. However I don't like Fishburne's narration which drains the movie of its tension and thrills. I don't think the story or the characters are anything original. Maybe the narration kept me from enjoying this more and finding that specialness.

This highly stylized pulp thriller from the early 90's remains quite an entertaining movie so long as one doesn't look too deeply into it. What sets it apart from similar movies of its ilk is the performance from Jeff Goldblum as a greedy, crazed Yuppie drug dealer. He steals scenes left and right from other cast members with a manic, over the top energy that is easily the highlight of the film. Unfortunately, he gets handed some of the worst lines in the movie, uproariously funny with his dead pan delivery however. Laurence Fishburne deserves honorable mention here as well for his scene where he begins to spontaneously rap pseudo-Beat street poetry to another character in the film.Entertaining, but as previously mentioned, don't look too deeply into it.

I've been down with the theme song....er, uh theme rap since the '90s but only minutes ago finished watching the film (on HBO)for the first time and at the risk of sounding too "spiteful", found it more predictable and less believable than any of the ridiculously lame "blaxsploitation" films I saw in the '70s. I mean, drug-villains who seem astonished that they're being blown away because they aren't packing iron at a transaction which they fully anticipated ?! Corrupt attorney/narcotics kingpin (Goldblum)teary-eyed as he tells his wife that he's not respected after having his hands harshly slapped ?!!.... pleeez. The dialog and (semi-)action scenes put me in mind of what a provincial writer might imagine to be street-level and ethnic or perhaps just dilute for mainstream appeal. In any case,the film seems a real waste of story potential and of all the black talent attached to it (for street-cred, I suspect) But I wasn't disappointed enough to turn it off.