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Sugar Hill
Roemello Skuggs ........
Wesley Snipes
Raynathan Skuggs .......
Michael Wright
Melissa
................ Theresa Randle
A.R. Skuggs
............ Clarence Williams III
Gus Molino ............. Abe Vigoda
Lolly Jonas
............ Ernie Hudson
20th Century-Fox presents a film
directed by Leon Ichaso. Produced by Rudy Langlais and Gregory Brown. Written by Barry Michael
Cooper. Photography by Bojan Bazelli.
Edited by Gary Karr. Music by Terence Blanchard. Running time: 123 minutes. Classified: R
(for intense drug related- violence, graphic heroin use and strong language).
In the last few years there have
been some wonderful movies by black directors and actors. They tend,
understandably, to deal with gangs, drugs and dysfunctional families. This
one is the best one I know of, from the standpoint of acting
and direction. The play itself is close to Greek tragedy in its
depth and impact.
There are echoes of the
"Godfather Saga" through here: a baptism scene, an strong
younger brother and a weak older one (Michael Wright's
Raynathan combines traits of hot-headed
Sonny and weak Fredo Corleone,
but is a richer character than either), intergenerational grudges, an
intelligent woman character who loves a gangster but not the gang life, lots
of violence (pre-emptive strikes, vengeance, and
what looks at first like sheer hotheadedness but
turns into something more) and foul language. Yet this is a more powerful
drama than "The Godfather," to my mind. It has a bit less pizazz; the violence is not so explosive and neatly
choreographed. Coppola in "Godfather"
was dealing with professional villains who carried out their
craft with a ruthless efficiency. Here the violence is less
efficient, less a matter of "business." The violent acts in this
movie are pre-eminently personal.
The film is not perfect. For one
thing, amid all the mayhem, the police are nowhere to be found. The
characters live in a world wholly to themselves. Perhaps that is how
they perceive it, but for me it removes some credibility from the story.
For another thing, there is the ending, which I shall discuss presently.
But on the whole, the film is extremely powerful drama. One really comes
to care for the chief characters, even, in time, the hot-headed brother,
the Mafia boss, and the invalid father. Minor characters like Roemello's childhood friends and associates, take on
real color and warmth.
Roemello
and Raynathan are sons of a drug dealer who
was paralyzed when his Mafia bosses turned on him and fired
many bullets into his body. Their mother died of a drug
overdose, powerfully portrayed at the beginning of the film, with the
boys watching in horror. As a teenager, Roemello,
the younger brother, played by Wesley Snipes, kills the Mafia thug who
fired the bullets into his father. Gus, the Mafia chief, rather
than avenging the death of his henchman, hires Roemello
to work drugs in Harlem, pretending that he does not know what Roemello did. We gather that he admires the young man
and has a certain guilt over the attack upon the father. Roemello climbs the mob ladder until he has his own
drug franchise, under Gus's organization, and
is living prosperously, with his older brother as his
chief assistant.
But Roemello
(like Michael Corleone) desperately wants out.
He is filled with guilt and anguish. He is in the same business that
destroyed his mother and wrecked his father's life. Eventually he meets
Melissa, a beautiful, gracious and intelligent woman; he wants to marry
her and leave the whole area. But Raynathan,
Ray, wants him to stay; Ray, who despises his father, has no one to love
him except his older brother. Gus's mob decide
to hire another black man to take some of the Harlem business, creating
suspicions fulfilled in violence.
Things develop in a remarkable way
to set the two brothers against one another at the end. The film could
have ended after the tragic attack of Ray upon Roemello,
after which Ray kills himself. Magically, it seems, Roemello
recovers from his injuries and moves to North Carolina to raise children
with Melissa.
Some critics consider the final
happy familial scene a cop-out. Well, there are plenty of these films that
end tragically, and we expect that. In general, films of this
genre teach the lesson that tragedy is inevitable in the drug-gang culture,
that it binds generation after generation to wickedness and terror. This
one, in a rather awkward way, to be sure, seems to be saying that that is
not necessarily so. It is possible to "just say no."
Now this is certainly rather
artificial. After all, Roemello is a rich man;
he can afford to move to an idyllic location with his wife and start a
family. Others are not so fortunate. Yet at least there is a nod here to
the fact that there is more to life than environmental determinism. From a Christian
point of view, there certainly are for everyone turns in the trail of life
when we can "just say no." That we don't is our own fault, and
therefore subject to God's judgment. We can't blame our circumstances,
even when they are as terrible as they are here. This is far from being a
Christian film, but that it at least presents the possibility of such an
alternative has to be a plus. I prefer to look at the film as a tragedy
with a postscript in heaven. I mean "heaven" symbolically, of
course. Roemello never confesses Christ in the
film. But it seems that he undergoes a profound change in his life that to
be is credible only on the assumption of regeneration.
Still, the most powerful elements of the film occur not at the ending, but in the body of the film, in the interplay of the characters. The understandings, misunderstandings, revelations, are remarkably complex and ring true again and again. There is much wisdom here about human nature.