Wesley Snipes May be Back and it's About Damn Time

In the words of many a rap bar “once again it's on!” Wesley Snipes is finally back, and of course it took someone black and of course it was Eddie Murphy. As I wrote before, Murphy has had a long career of using his own dream movies and cache to bridge generations of talent and he is back at it again in his latest "Dolemite is My Name". The film sets out to pay homage to spirit of Rudy Ray Moore, by way of continuous themes of persistence, crude humor, and camp, and it succeeds largely because everyone is so clear on what it is they're doing. No one more -so than Snipes. The actor with the most bonafides on set dived the most headlong into the spirit of this film creating a character that is less a practice in exactitude, and more in essence of not only D'Urville Martin, but the movie and the times. It's something that is apparent from the his opening scene in the movie. Murphy's Rudy Ray Moore seeks to hire D'Urville as an actor in his movie , and as the movie goes D'Urville is as large in his own mind as the people he has worked with. The performance is recognizable as an outrageous adaptation of the trope of the egotistical actor, as well as an amalgamation of characters from blaxploitation films like “The Mack” , black stock characters like Antonio Fargas, the largeness of a Frederich March, and even a bit of W.C. Fields.

Dolemite shows us his acting and kung-fu chops. #Dolemite #EddieMurphy #WesleySnipes 📺: Netflix ⚠️: I don't own or stream this show. Just a fan of it!

What Snipes's opening scene and beyond moved me to feel is both profound happiness for the loud rediscovery of Wesley Snipes, and continued rebuke for the quietly tragic loss of he and so many other large black talents to a Hollywood that refused to let them be seen. To realise what or why it is that I feel that Snipes has been dealt a lesser hand, (though not altogether bad), you have to go back to the role that made him, but should've MADE him. Wesley had been around in Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video, (the one time he would work with any true white Autuer in Scorcese) on major TV shows like Miami Vice, and in films like Major League, and King of New York, but he broke out in Mario Van Peebles searingly fatalistic crime ballad “New Jack City” as Nino Brown. As breakthrough performances go it's better is difficult to find. Snipes was imprinted on every square inch of the reel, his barbarous magnetism served as the centrifugal force of the movies pull. Every word every line, every look, movement, step was a defining criterion for Nino's explosive temper, alpha male presentation of masculinity, and his omnipresent charisma. It's in the way he eats a banana while dismissively listening to a soon to be rival explain to him how disrespectful his latest move is to the Italians..

It’s in profound moments of inner conflict, and tightly guarded vulnerability, like when he decides to kill close friend G-money, holding back tears he can’t stop, clinching and reclinching Gee to his chest as if to get just one last feel for his brother in arms before doing what he feels is the only way out for him continuing his path of ruthless self survival by murdering his own supposed brother (which would be his worst act if not for using a child as a human shield) it's a kind of depraved self control and victimhood…

And finally, it’s most certainly in the centerpiece scene of the movie when he interrogates his entire team over a recent infiltration of the Carter building ( he himself ruthlessly commandeered) by the police. Snipes enters the room with that kind of rare screen presence occupied by some of our greatest acting talents, Brando, Hepburn, Rowlands, Redgrave, Pacino. He’s in full possession of that certain je ne sais quoi that makes so many people loving, fearing, hating, and pledging fealty feel completely possible because we the audience go along for the ride and end up doing much of the same. There are moments of trained elegance, like the scenes final moment when Snipes utters “Now..leave me” and of slick rambunctious improvisation like when he jumps rope over his dog chain…all of it is brilliant...

Uploaded by movies cilp on 2019-05-25.

Snipes and the scene itself compare favorably to another film about Cops and Gangsters; DePalma’s “The Untouchables”. In its infamous “Baseball” scene Robert Deniro is Al Capone heading up a dinner meeting with various associates of his empire. Both scenes are constructed such as the spend a great deal of time on the actor, the set up is similar, and a shocking bit of violence occurs, but, how they arrive there is different...

The Untouchables movie clips: http://j.mp/1BcPG9X BUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/sW4EVr Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Capone's (Robert De Niro) baseball metaphor ends badly for one gangster.

What’s different is how much in each scene the set-up leaves for the actor . In The Untocuhables the setting seems congenial, setting up the surprise. In New Jack City, the mood is already ominous, lessening the surprise element if not curtailing it altogether. Each one brings its own unique power, but New Jack is asking more of its actor. Both have the job of making a sudden act of violence feel authentic, but one has the storytelling element of surprise already behind them, the other (Snipes) has to convince us of the expected being unexpected as well.

A breakout performance like this comes every once in a blue moon, and usually it garners a shipload of attention, rave reviews, at least some Oscar attention, as well as a step into the big leagues. For Wesley Snipes it meant a strange purgatory of near A list ability and stardom, with B- movie projects, save for White Men can’t jump, and a couple Spike Lee films right up until he and Marvel teamed up to make Blade. Yet as influential as two of those films were, as much money as they made, and as singular as Snipes was in the role of Blade, for that period and after it was the only thing he had going. Snipes like Angela Bassett, and Don Cheadle was a victim of a rigid and unimaginative Hollywood that exit today more-so in its storytelling than its its racial make-up which is rapidly changing (while still having a long way to go). The big heavy coveted roles were for majority of white people, the black ones to Denzel, and everyone else had to fight amongst the scraps. Fortunately for Wesley plenty of black filmmakers existed in the 90’s but when the need for “black films” went out so too did many of Wesley’s opportunities. And now some 6 years after his release from prison for tax evasion (insert eye roll here) Snipes is finally back on the scene, being rightfully awashed in praise for being at least one of the best things about this movie. After all these years of watching Snipes be excellent in nearly everything he does from New Jack, to better than given credit for action films like Drop Zone, to To Wong Foo, Sugar Hill, and more, I am ecstatic about a possible return for Snipes, and all the possibilities for him in this new space. Eddie Murphy himself is at the beginning of his own comeback as well, and rightfully that has been huge news, but I wouldn't want anyone to forget the level of talent Snipes is, and what roles in Indies, comic book films, action films, horror, and as we can see comedy would look like with Snipes. For autuers like Barry , Ava, Coogler, Rees, Taika Waititi, Kathryn Bigelow, Winding- Refn, Kasuma, and more to take a second look at what he has done, and realise what he can add to a production. To these possibilities, and to this return (Coming to America pt 2 included) all I can say with apprehension and caution as to whether this will lead to a proper resurgence is “It’s about damn time”