King of New York: Steelbook (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Apr 15, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Abel FerraraRelease Date(s)
1990 (April 15, 2025)Studio(s)
Reteitalia/Scena International/Penta Film/Carolco Pictures/New Line Cinema (Lionsgate Limited)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: See Below
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
There’s no way to do justice to King of New York without getting into spoiler territory, so caveat emptor: there be spoilers here. Abandon hope, all ye that enter. Skip straight to the video section if you’re not ready to do your duty as a knight to sample as much peril as you can.
King of New York was released to a world that wasn’t quite ready for it yet. It was the sixth feature collaboration between idiosyncratic New York director Abel Ferrara and writer Nicholas St. John, and in some ways, it became a statement on everything that they had done together up to that point. This thesis wasn’t necessarily well received during King of New York’s premiere at the New York Film Festival, where it was treated to boos and walkouts. (No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown.) The reviews were mixed and the box office was negligible, but from an artistic standpoint, King of New York was a bullet between the eyes for anyone who did manage to catch it during its brief theatrical run in 1990. It was a reminder that even timeworn stories can feel fresh and vital when they’re being told by filmmakers who are capable of presenting them in a unique voice.
The most striking aspect of King of New York is its openly performative nature, and that even extends to the characters who inhabit the film. Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, Steve Buscemi, Janet Julian, Theresa Randall, and the rest of the actors who play Frank White’s crew aren’t so much playing characters as they’re playing characters who are already in character. There’s an offbeat theatricality to King of New York, because that’s an honest way of presenting the theatricality of the people who inhabit it. Artifice and realism always perform a sinuous dance in Ferrara’s films, but King of New York may well be the apotheosis of that masquerade.
As embodied by Walken, drug lord Frank White is an extraordinarily multilayered character. When we first glimpse Frank during the opening sequence, when he’s on the cusp of being released from prison, he appears quiet, almost pensive, decked out plainly in his prison garb and a pair of spectacles. By the time that he gets to his suite at the Plaza Hotel a few moments later, cleaned up and wearing an expensive tailored suit, he’s fully in character as the master drug kingpin. The contemplative inner Frank White will never return again, even while he’s dying in a cab at the end of the film. (Frank White is too good at playing Frank White to let a good death scene go to waste.)
When his former gang members arrive to see him, led by his faithful lieutenant Jimmy Jump (Fishburne), what follows is a playful battle of wills as each side takes on different personae. Ferrara and St. John deliberately chose to withhold the relationship between the two of them prior to this moment, so viewers are left to wonder if the conflict is a real one. These tensions continue to rise until they suddenly break in amusing fashion, but it’s worth noting that it’s not so much a matter of them breaking the characters that they’ve been using to play with each other as it is of them returning to the characters with which they’re the most comfortable. Jimmy Jump in particular has no interest whatsoever in the “real” Frank White; when Frank asks why he never came to see him in prison, Jump replies: “Who wanted to see you in a cage, man?” Jump was waiting patiently for the Wizard to return, since he had no desire to see the man behind the curtain.
Both Frank and Jump have their own skewed version of morality that may or may not be an act, but since they’re always playing roles anyway, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. Frank’s altruism in charitable acts such as funding a hospital may be out of genuine motivations to leave something good behind him, or else it may just be part of his public character, but either way, the only thing that really matters to him is that he’s staying in that character. Jump gives money to a poor woman and her grandchildren at a fast-food restaurant, but whether he’s doing that out of any real concern for their welfare or just doing it to thumb his nose at the snobby cashier who had mistreated the kids is also beside the point. Jump is playing Robin Hood at that point, and the only thing that’s relevant to him is how well he performs in the role. Jimmy Jump absolutely never breaks character in the film, even down to his bitter and painful end.
That’s the real strength of Frank and his crew: they always play their roles regardless of the circumstances. The weakness of the group of cops who are trying to take Frank down is that they can’t decide what roles that they want to play, and they fail to stay in character even when they try. They start out by attempting to be good cops, but their hearts aren’t really in it. Compare the confident interaction between Frank and Jump during their first scene together to the way that officer Dennis Gilley (David Caruso) awkwardly roasts his fellow cops like Roy Bishop (Victor Argo) and Tommy Flanigan (Wesley Snipes) during a wedding reception. He isn’t really comfortable playing the part of the honest cop, yet when Gilley and some of his fellow officers decide to take Frank down by any means necessary, they also lack sufficient motivation to play rogue cops instead. They just can’t commit to their roles as effectively as Frank’s crew can.
Their decision to go rogue leads to a rather singular car chase which is quite unlike any other in terms of the degree to which it exists to serve as character development. In King of New York, the performative nature of the acting extends to the action scenes as well. The car chase is highly theatrical instead of realistic, but that’s entirely fitting, because all the world’s a stage to Frank and Jimmy Jump. Jump even goes full Cagney by boldly standing up through the sunroof of a moving vehicle to fire at those who are in pursuit—top o’ the car, ma. The shootout that follows the chase is also fiercely theatrical, and most importantly, it drives home the primary difference between Jump and Gilley. It’s never really been a question of good vs. evil, but rather a question of who can stay in character the longest. Jump keeps up his performance even while suffering agonizing pain after being shot in the stomach, and that manages to infuriate Gilley enough to break any semblance of playing a real cop. Jump may end up dead in the process, but he still wins the roleplaying battle on his own terms.
Yet the single most impressive character moment in the entire film is one of the simplest. At the police funeral that follows this shootout, Gilley storms off to his car before the service is over. When his car won’t start, he lets loose with a paroxysm of pure rage. For all of the theatricality in the film, this is one of its most emotionally honest moments. Gilley has lost control of his life, his job, his friends, and of all the roles that he’s tried to play, so losing control of his vehicle becomes the emotional straw that breaks the camel’s back. Aside from the opening at the prison, it’s one of the only scenes in the entire film where all personal artifice has been swept aside. Appropriately enough, it’s at this most vulnerable moment that Gilley loses his life to Frank, who remains so utterly committed to playing the role of Frank White that he boldly drives right into a sea of police officers to enact some very public revenge. This scene would be completely implausible if not for the fact that Frank’s roleplaying had been so clearly established throughout the rest of King of New York. He always feels invulnerable as long as he stays in character.
Of course, Frank White isn’t invulnerable, and Roy Bishop finally does the job that the rest of his team couldn’t handle (at the expense of his own life, naturally.) Every king’s reign must eventually come to an end. Yet unlike Gilley, Frank never loses control of himself. All of his world has indeed been a stage, and so he dies in an appropriately Shakespearean fashion in front of a massive audience on the streets of his beloved New York City. He always stayed true to his role as the King of New York, and also to the mantra that he offered to Bishop by way of explanation:
“I spent half my life in prison. I never got away with anything, and I never killed anybody that didn’t deserve it.”
Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli shot King of New York on 35mm film using Arriflex 35BL 4 cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This version uses the digital restoration that was done by Arrow Films for their 2020 UHD release in the U.K. The 4K scan of the original camera negative and digital cleanup work was done at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, while grading was performed at Silver Salt Restoration in London (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 are included on the disc). The final results were approved by both Bazelli and Abel Ferrara.
Because of the way that the opening titles play out, the majority of the first few minutes of King of New York were derived from dupe elements instead of the negative, and they display the expected loss of sharpness and detail. Once the credits are over, everything looks much sharper, clearer, and more detailed. Bazelli’s cinematography varies widely throughout the film, ranging from simple and gritty to highly stylized, and this 4K master handles all of it with aplomb. While some sequences are lit naturally, others are bathed in colored gels and filters, and all of those blasts of color look rich and beautifully saturated in HDR. The contrast range also benefits from the HDR grade, with deep blacks that don’t crush any detail in the process. The grain looks natural, and it’s not marred by any compression artifacts, either. The only minor issue is some instability during the closing credits, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is the best that King of New York has ever looked.
Audio is offered in English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 2.0 LPCM, with optional English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles. King of New York was released theatrically in Dolby Stereo (SR encoded), and the 2.0 track here is described as being the theatrical one. It’s indistinguishable from the theatrical 2.0 track on Arrow’s disc, so that appears to be the case. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the 5.1 track, which has some strange anomalies. For example, when Emilio Zappa leaves the bordello at 3:35 and walks to meet his fate in a phone booth, the background street noises are exaggerated in the front channels while the sounds of gunfire are muted and muffled. It almost sounds like the rear L/R channels were accidentally swapped with the front ones, except that the primary gunfire effects aren’t coming from the real channels instead. They’re just missing. Arrow’s 5.1 track doesn’t have the same problem, so something went wrong in the authoring of this disc. Hopefully Lionsgate will address the issue, and we’ll update this review if they do.
Fortunately, I don’t recommend the 5.1 remix anyway, even on Arrow’s disc. The theatrical 2.0 track sounds smoother and more balanced, and as a Dolby Stereo mix, it already has encoded surround channels. (Just be sure to engage your Dolby Surround/DTS:X encoder when listening to it.) The 5.1 mix doesn’t sound like a true remix anyway, just a discrete encoding of the original 4-channel Dolby Stereo mix without any split surrounds. Also, the 2.0 and 5.1 tracks aren’t level matched, even on the Arrow disc. Setting aside the authoring errors here, Arrow’s 5.1 runs much hotter than either of the 2.0 versions, with harsher sibilants and some audible distortion. So even if Lionsgate eventually offers a replacement program, I still recommend the theatrical 2.0. YMMV, so caveat emptor. (5.1 errors aside, I would rate the 2.0 track as a B+.)
The Lionsgate Limited 4K Ultra HD Steelbook release of King of New York is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. It also includes a Digital Code on a paper insert tucked inside. The Steelbook itself features new artwork, and there’s also a transparent plastic slipcover that covers parts of the underlying image while letting others show through. The following extras are included on both the UHD and the Blu-ray:
- Audio Commentary by Abel Ferrara
- Audio Commentary by Joe Delia, Mary Kane, Randy Sabusawa, and Anthony Redman
- The Sacred and Profane in King of New York (HD – 18:15)
- Flashback on King of New York – Christopher Walken (HD – 9:51)
- Flashback on King of New York – Paul Calderon (HD – 8:42)
- Possession: An Interview with Abel Ferrara (HD – 28:14)
- Interview with Augusto Caminito (Upscaled SD – 20:20)
- A Short Film about the Long Career of Abel Ferrara (Upscaled SD – 47:04)
- The Adventures of Schoolly D: Snowboarder (Upscaled SD – 42:11)
- Schoolly D Music Video (Upscaled SD – 3:20)
- Theatrical Trailer (HD – 1:39)
- TV Spots (Upscaled SD – 1:06, 2 in all)
Both of the commentaries were originally recorded for the 2004 Special Edition DVD from Artisan. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Abel Ferrara will know what to expect from his track: namely, a wild and frequently quite abrasive ride. He’s never been fond of doing commentaries, and he states up front that the only reason why he’s working with Artisan Entertainment’s Amir Malin again is because he got paid $5,000 cash to do it. He also says that he’s sitting down with “Mark Rance and Frankie,” one of whom asks occasional questions to keep Ferrara going. Thanks to that, he does provide some hard information like how the script evolved from its original conception, and what had to be improvised on set as a result—Jimmy Jump was originally written as a white Italian man, so Laurence Fishburne had to create much of the character on the fly. Ferrara also provides some interesting details like why the possessory credit up front went to producer Augusto Caminito. Otherwise, he spends a lot of time watching and laughing, admiring the female actors in no uncertain terms, and generally being Abel Ferrara. Abel always gonna Abel.
The second commentary features composer Joe Delia, producer Mary Kane, casting director Randy Sabusawa, and editor Anthony Redman. It’s a true group commentary, and given the fact that they all worked on very different aspects of the production, they always have something interesting to contribute. They even point out continuity errors like the fact that Walken has a mustache in a few shots at the prison during the opening—Redman was well aware of that fact, so he did his best to cut around it and not draw attention to it (it’s still visible if you’re looking for it, especially in 4K). They also talk about some of the challenges that they faced working on other Abel Ferrara projects. This is the track to audition if you want to learn practical information about the making of King of New York, but if you want to learn why King of New York, then Ferrara’s caustic personality on the first track says it all.
Lionsgate has added three new extras for this release. The Sacred and Profane in King of New York examines the origins and influences in King of New York, including the way that it blended exploitation cinema and art films (something that Ferrara had already explored in his previous work). It includes interviews with critic Adrian Martin and Florian Zappe, editor of Refocus: The Films of Abel Ferrara. Flashback on King of New York is a two-part interview, the first with the great Christopher Walken, and the second with no less great Paul Calderón. Walken describes himself as an actor who has to get lucky, and there’s always a roll of the dice aspect every time that he shows up on set. He feels that the audience doesn’t have to know why an actor is doing what they do, but the actor does. Calderón goes into more detail about how all of the characters were originally supposed to be Italian, and how mixing different types together in the film gave it a unique flavor. He says that Abel Ferrara is a mad scientist who mixes chemicals together, shakes them up, and then lets them explode. You’re never afraid to try anything with him, because that’s exactly what he wants.
The interviews with Abel Ferrara and Augusto Caminito were originally recorded for the 2012 Region B Blu-ray from Carlotta Films in France. Ferrara warns the interviewer that he probably can’t remember much about making King of New York, but then he proceeds to drop a variety of fascinating bits of information, including the fact that his original inspiration to make a film like this was The Terminator (we’re talking about Ferrara here, so that may or may not be true) and real-life gangsters like John Gotti. He says that they ended up working without a net, shooting things that weren’t scripted in places where they didn’t have permission to shoot. In Augusto Caminito’s interview, he explains how he became involved with the production despite being completely unfamiliar with Ferrara or Nicholas St. John. He also offers some thoughts about American culture as seen in the film.
Rounding out everything are three more extras that were originally produced for the 2004 Artisan DVD. A Short Film about the Long Career of Abel Ferrara is a collection of interviews with associates of Ferrara’s including biographer Brad Stevens, cinematographer Ken Kelsch, art director Charles Lagola, script supervisor Lisa Krueger, Joe Delia, Anthony Redman, Mary Kane, Randy Sabusawa, and more. It’s a portrait of the artist as viewed through the lenses of those who have worked with him, so it’s well worth a look (even though the long career of Abel Ferrara has continued well past this point in time). On the other hand, The Adventures of Schoolly D: Snowboarder is a portrait of the rap artist via rock critic Alan Light, and also in Schoolly D’s own words, both in character as Schoolly D and in his real persona as Jesse Bonds Weaver Jr. He talks about his career and working with Ferrara, including shooting the King of New York music video, which he says is the only take that he ever performed of the song. Finally, the Schoolly D Music Video is the aforementioned music video, directed by Abel Ferrara with Laurence Fishburne in character as Jimmy Jump.
The only really significant thing that’s missing here from any previous editions is Abel Ferrera: Not Guilty, a 2003 documentary that was produced for the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps. Arrow included it on their DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD releases of King of New York, and it’s the only one of their extras that hasn’t been carried forward here. On the other hand, Lionsgate has added three new extras of their own, and also included The Adventures of Schoolly D: Snowboarder and the Music Video that Arrow didn’t. Lionsgate is going out of their way to include as many extras as possible on their Lionsgate Limited releases, and this one is no exception, even with that single omission. Lionsgate also includes a Blu-ray and Digital Code, while Arrow’s set is UHD only, so they have the edge in that regard as well. The only caveat is the problem with their 5.1 track, and while hopefully Lionsgate will address that issue, the original theatrical 2.0 is preferable. So, I’m still recommending this release without hesitation.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).