![]() Unlike the countless movie characters whose only goal is to kill their enemies and obtain their desires, the Fishburne character is placed in the middle of moral dilemmas that torture him and then left to figure his own way out. Tolkin is clearly interested in characters who do wrong and then have to live with the consequences of their actions. Bean is unknown to me, but Tolkin is having a hot year after directing and writing " The Rapture," about a woman who moves from promiscuity to deep religious belief, and writing Robert Altman's " The Player," about a Hollywood executive whose studio power struggle seems to threaten him more deeply than a murder investigation. The screenplay is by Henry Bean and Michael Tolkin. That's part of the process elevating the story from the mundane to the mythic. ![]() He consciously goes back to traditions of 1940s film noir here he has Fishburne narrate the story much as Fred MacMurray did in " Double Indemnity" (1944) and allows the language of the narration to be poetic and colorful. "Deep Cover" was directed by Bill Duke, who directed a lot of television before getting his first feature assignment (" A Rage In Harlem" in 1991). ![]() And as the child of an alcoholic who was shot while drunk, he doesn't drink or use drugs, until a crucial turning point in the movie. He engages in bitter arguments with Smith over the morality of the actions the government wants him to take. Fishburne, faced with a situation where he might have to kill somebody, is deeply torn, and he suffers agonizingly through the aftermath. Most drug movies are so casual about their shootings and killings that you'd hardly think it even hurt to get shot. What sets "Deep Cover" apart is its sense of good and evil, the way it has the Fishburne character agonize over the moral decisions he has to make. Nineteen years later, Stevens is a Cincinnati police officer. Traumatized by his father's death, Stevens swears that he will never end up like him. And eventually Fishburne infiltrates the highest levels of the organization, which is bringing drugs in from Latin America.Īll of that is more or less routine, the stuff of many other movies. witnesses his drug-addicted, alcoholic father getting shot and killed while robbing a liquor store. He is able to work his way into the circle of a mid-level drug distributor, played with a nice, off-balance craziness by Jeff Goldblum. Under cover, your faults will become virtues." Fishburne goes undercover as a street buyer of cocaine. Look at all your rage and repressed violence. You resent authority and have a rigid moral code, but no underlying system of values. He is talked into taking the assignment by a cold federal agent played by Charles Martin Smith, who overcomes his resistance by quoting from a psychological profile: "You score almost like a criminal.
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