“A man with a rigid moral code, with no underlying sense of values, repressed violence, rage” - Special Agent gent Carver reads off to him from his file. It is pointed out to him that while being a cop, he is also the ideal criminal ( A powerful under pinning commentary itself). In fact he is praised by his superior for possessing some of the very same qualities common to a noir protagonist. Upon first arriving on camera Fishburne's Russell Stevens is the prototypical noir male protagonist, unwittingly out of his depth, but unflappable in his confidence. An intentional about face from the narratives most presented on screen about men, and most certainly black men in 1992, and it is this discovery that made re-watching Deep Cover so emphatically satisfying. While many times revisiting a film we are imbuing it with qualities it was not born with, in this case, with the specific aspects of this specific film, I think this is its original intention. Doubling as both a great under cover thriller, and a great allegory for the way in which black people must adjust themselves in the world. It is noir conventions as political commentary on the black experience in America. The hero's journey is not a journey to be a better drug dealer, or cop (not in most of the ways typical to the genre anyway), definitely not a hero, but becoming in fact more open to his emotions, to what he is perpetuating, (even as an officer of the law) and to what end he is being used. Simultaneaously reinforcing and under cutting hyper-masculine energy out of almost all of its dialogue and almost every interaction. Oozing the same distilled cool as its star (Laurence Fishburne) out of every frame. As directed by Bill Duke Deep Cover is a poetic, warm lit, cold hearted jazz/hip hop infused thriller with the same kinetic energy as the underworld it seeks to portray. A "How did I miss this?!" or “How did WE miss this?!" 1992’s “Deep Cover” is such a film for me. It is always a complicated mixture of exhilaration, and anguish, revisiting a film that was not only under-appreciated by its time, but by me personally. On other occasions, aesthetics, general techniques, methodology, the generally accepted filmmaking style, or genre, trend, and style of an era may conflict with the same attributes in a given film if it strays too much from the norm. There are often times where the political, thematic, or cinematic, values of a movie are at odds with the society upon which it is thrust.
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