Sugar Hill

Clarance Williams III, Gave one of the best performances by a black character actor I have ever seem, he portrays an elderly junkie in this fast pace and exciting movie. Sugar Hill is a picture that every african american should see, it has all the qualities that make a motion picture excellent, see it, and you will never forget this movie. Wesley Snipes also gave a great part as the head of the herion empire in Harlem, he and his brother started from nothing, and move to become feared by the white society and the mob, what kept them going is there love for each other, it is something that we should always remember between two people, I know that I will never forget the chemistry they had in this movie.

I'm surprised that someone else has this opinion, but so be it. I thought this was a wonderful story about a young man from the projects, his close relationship with his younger brother, and his ambitions borne out of a disgraceful upbringing by his absentee, addicted parents. Also involved is his relationship with his brother, who seems to never have grown up at all. They start as drug runners on "Sugar Hill," and eventually run the place, with Romey the big kingpin. What's ironic, though, is that Sugar Hill (sugar = euphoric high on hard drugs) is the same place they grew up, and where their parents got strung-out thereby neglecting their responsibilities in guiding their children. Luckily, Romey came out of it with some sense, street and book, and he takes over as head of the family (the family that's left that is). This is a what I believe is a common tale of the recycling of the same woes that happens to families on the mean streets. I think it's an interesting phenomenon. Also very reminiscent of Scarface, in that the youths grow up with outrageous ambitions that no amount of money can ever appease, a need for power, money, success. The ending is bittersweet, but you feel satisfied with the outcome overall.

As titles for this film go, I prefer Sugar Hill to Harlem. The title Harlem speaks to where the characters are. The title Sugar Hill refers to an ideal that has been lost and may never be regained. Harlem would be a simplistic title for a simplistic movie, while Sugar Hill is an appropriate title for a movie that frequently aims high and sometimes succeeds. So you'll forgive me if if I refer to it as Sugar Hill in this review (plus, I'm not really sure where it was actually released as "Harlem").

Sugar Hill opens with a series of pictures of urban life in the Sugar Hill part of Harlem. Since the photos are all black and white and since the people look happy and middle class, we know that these pictures are of the way things used to be. We then meet our two "heroes," Raynathan and Romoello Skuggs, as children who stand by and watch as their mother ODs on heroin and dies before their eyes. Even though she was a junkie, their mom wished for great things for her sons, but as we move into the present, Roemello's voiceover tells the hard truth: "The boy you loved as become the man you feared." Roemello (Wesley Snipes) and Raynathan (Michael Wright) control the drug trade in a part of the borough. They live a ghetto fabulous lifestyle with fancy rayon suits and fine cars. They get nice tables at classy restaurants. But things are about to change. The local mafioso Gus (Abe Vigoda) is letting a new dealer (Ernie Hudson) move in on their turf. Roemello wants out, having seen what drugs did to his father (Clarence Williams III), once a promising musician, now a struggling drug addict. But Raynathan -- the less intelligent, but more emotional of the brothers -- wants to start a turf war. The film has a "B" story involving a romance between Roemello and a beautiful woman (Theresa Randle) who loves Roemello, but is affair to be around him.

Sugar Hill plays a bit like New Jack City (both movies were written by Barry Michael Cooper). At its best, it feels like a smarter and more mature film than Mario Van Peebles's classic modern blaxploitation film. There's a complexity to Sugar Hill that New Jack City lacked once it regressed into a cops-vs-gangsters story. There's no law in Sugar Hill, no Judd Nelson to mess things up with moralizing. In Sugar Hill we've only got bad and worse.

Snipes's Roemello rules over the city like a God, holding the fate of thousands in his hand. Director Leon Ichaso goes a little too far to make this point. Snipes is constantly shot on rooftops and verandas, anywhere he can look out on his kingdom and loom over it. As a visual metaphor, it's effective, but it sometimes places a little too broadly, which is at odds with Snipes's wonderful, internalized performance. Snipes is physically intimidating, but as an actor he has sufficient brains to carry the film. His Roemello is the ego to the id of New Jack City's Nino Brown.

Actually, the film is full of amazing performances accentuated by the script's willingness to stop the action to allow the characters to tell stories. As the burnout father, Clarence Williams III (that would be "Linc" from the original Mod Squad) is just amazing and the story he tells Raynathan as he's about to shoot up is a devastating show-stopper. Vigoda also gives a performance tempered by age, and also has a super monologue, where he remembers the way Harlem used to be. Michael Wright's Raynathan grows on you. At first the acting seems too manic, but when you realize that it's a cover for how deeply he depends on his brother, it gains depth and Wright carries the film's final twenty minutes. Randle is fine in her romantic moments, but becomes shrieky when the role calls for high-pitched emotion.

Sugar Hill goes on for too long. It runs over two hours and there's no excuse for that. The plot involving Ernie Hudson's ex-boxer (Hudson is also excellent playing against type here) has confusing moments and there are several peripheral mob characters whose roles are never fully explained. Theresa Randle also has a very strange and random encounter with a basketball star (Vondie Curtis-Hall) which seems to have been in the script for symbolic reasons that just don't pay off properly.

On the whole, Sugar Hill works for me because of the consistent aura of sadness which fills the film. This movie isn't anywhere near as fun as New Jack City. It's not flashy, it's somber. But it worked well enough for me to give is a 7/10 recommendation.

Years after they saw their mother OD and their father shot in the legs over drug dealings, brothers Roemello and Raynathan now run the streets of Harlem. However Roemello begins to tire of the trade and looks to leave, a new girlfriend helping to show him what he is missing out on. However getting out is never easy and is made more complicated by Lolly Jonas moving in on their territory with the beginnings of a gang war.

The score to this film is a lazy, rambling blues number that plays consistently at times, like wallpaper. It is this score that I think sums up the weakness of this film - it is too slow, too patient and too lacking in style or energy. That's not to say it's a poor film for it is not, but it could have been better. Much has been done to try and make this quite a serious film that avoids the black gangsta clichés but the plot requires too much talking and exposition. This wouldn't have been as much of an issue if the characters and narrative had been more convincing.

However, I never fully bought Roemello and Raynathan as adults having just seen flashbacks of their childhood. I could accept that they would end up selling the poison that ruined their lives, but would Roemello been as balanced and as suave as he was? Likewise, in the drug game - to get on top wouldn't he needed to have been ruthless and violent? He just seems too nice. This lack of convincing characters is an issue as they were really needed to make the rather slow and talky script more involving. Despite this weakness the film is still interesting, it doesn't really do anything different from things you will have seen before, and parts of it hark back to better gangster-epic style films. It doesn't distinguish itself but I must give it credit for trying to be a serious black gangster film in a sea of New Jack type clichés in other films.

Snipes has become a better leading man with time and he tries to give a serious role here as a younger man but it never convinced me. I never got a sense of any menace or `dark side' to his character - he played him far too upright and moral to be a convincing character - his battle to go straight would have been more interesting if it didn't look like he was already halfway there! Randle is OK but has little to really do, and I never once understand where her character was coming from. Wright is a more erratic performance and more convincing than Snipes. Support is good from a variety of well known faces including Williams, Hill, Hudson and Bottoms.

Overall this is a serious gangster film that had potential but whose delivery is just a little too slow and talky. The characters are more than just clichés but the script can't get them where they need to go - it sets up complex characters with childhood background but then fails to bring that out as adults. Worth a watch but it is quite slow, aiming for the grandeur of better films that it can't quite reach.

Sugar Hill was one of the most thought provking films about drugs released in the early nineties. Wesley Snipes is brilliant in the lead role of Romello a drug dealer who wants to go straight when he finds love. Micheal Wright the scene stealer is even better as his brother Ray the more violent of the two. But the standout performance belongs to Clarenece Williams III as the drug addicted father. I give *** out of ****.