turned into rick dalton pouting at the tv in once upon a time in hollywood when it got to the scene where wesley snipes points a gun while crying

Fascinating. Inarguably iconic but also actively struggling against its roots as blaxploitation, so much so that it has a really hard time balancing a pretty clumsy cop story with the anger and social anxiety that's clearly on its mind. Nino Brown's SCARFACE narrative has to fight for time with Van Peebles and his crew, none of whom can match Snipes for sheer charisma (no not even Ice-T), not to mention that they're basically ciphers. And the righteous indignation over the drug crisis actually makes pains to paint itself as having little to do with race and more with the simple scourge of addiction. The rest features an almost cartoonish lack of verisimilitude that nevertheless felt entirely "real" at the time. To a lot of audiences this was entirely new territory.

Playfully preachy & delightfully distasteful blaxploitation Scarface; a 5-star movie if you were to remove every scene not directly associated with Nino Brown. Seriously, there’s so much shoehorned commonplace detective work, it feels like if Wolf of Wall Street had decided to allocate half its runtime to Kyle Chandler’s character instead of Jordan Belfort. But that’s alright, cause even when it’s brimming with badass swagger and great performances (shoutout Chris Rock, seriously), Wesley Snipes is THAT much more elite than everyone else combined. Dude spawned quotes and memes out the ass for decades to come, and even got to hang upside down like Batman to slit a dude’s throat! I do wonder, though, how good would Nino have been at filing his tax returns?

Best Films about (Somewhat) Organized Crime

"I wanna shoot you so bad, my dick's hard!"
One of the greatest lines ever said in a movie. Iconic behavior!

I really hope that at some point in my lifetime I have the chance to tell someone “sit yo five dollar ass down before I make change.”

Wesley Snipes just wants to deal smarter,
So he goes and moves into Tha Carter.
And maybe inspires,
Simon's "The Wire",
Or at least Lil Wayne for starters.

I love this movie. The performances (especially Ice T and Snipes) are fantastic, the world is well built, the style is bold...I always thought Van Peebles watched a lot of Bava and Argento making this. And that soundtrack! Important genre cinema.

“You gotta rob to get rich in Reagan’s America.”

Craxploitation.

This was a movie me and my fam wore out when I was growing up. Kinda wild what my mom let us watch this. This is goofier than I remember especially with the hyper-earnest arc for Chris Rock’s doomed addict and everything with Ice-T’s undercover cop. But the reason to watch this is Wesley Snipes’ bombastic, hilarious, nasty performance as kingpin Nino Brown.