Tough, cynical, intelligent and ahead of its time. 10 years before The Wire looked at the US War On Drugs in a similar fashion, to widespread critical acclaim, this little seen gem made most of the same points and was largely ignored. Laurence Fishburne gives a true tour de force of a performance as the troubled main protagonist- an angry, flawed, violent but ultimately deeply moral young cop. The supporting cast are equally impressive- and like all great noir films, each character is realistically flawed.....with the exception of Clarence Williams' honest detective (who winds up paying the ultimate price for being a good man in an evil, corrupt world in a devastating climax) there are no heroes here, just different shades of bad- I've rarely seen a film with such a cynical view of the police/law enforcement, and the villains- from Jeff Goldblum's greedy and amoral lawyer to Gregory Sierra's truly terrifying mid level dealer- are shown as even worse. What's most striking though, is the films uncompromising cynicism. It's explicitly stated that Guzman, the main kingpin, is and shall remain untouchable, because he's a close friend of the then president George Bush Snr! And, in perhaps the films most knowing line of dialogue, when Goldblum's character states to the Latin American Guzman "there's no black, Hispanic or white anymore.....just rich and poor, and we're all rich so we should be on the same side"- well doesn't that say it all- not just about drugs and the war against them, but about unfettered free market capitalism in general? An outstanding film- please see it if you like your thrillers tough, intelligent and thought provoking.

One of the better drug movies has Fishburne who's really deceiving himself, going undercover. His reasons for becoming a cop, are seen at the start, where as a kid, one Christmas Eve, he sees his father shot down, after holding up a liquor store. He made a promise to himself that he would never drink or take drugs. Both promises are broken later on. His assignment (where a lot of other black cops failed the interview in quick cut scenes) for a shady superior-a fine Charles Martin Smith takes him on a journey through the underworld of drugs and it's penetrators. This includes scuzzy lawyer, Goldblum, fun here, also a desperate smooth talking pimp, a cowering slug too, with slick and catchy rhymes. His life is soon cut short while beaten to death by a pool cue from one of the real bad nasties of the show, who later challenges Goldblum to a knuckle game, where Goldblum, loses, bad, we too. feel that stinging and throbbing pain through skin. There's a nice sidestory. Fishburne living at one of these halfway houses, has a beautiful neighbor, a latina girl, a crack whore with a kid, again the message of drugs and it's effects, eminent here in this tight solid actioner. Her desperation and dependency on drugs, manifestly shown when trying to sell her boy to Fishburne, a sort of father figure here, as seen in it's ending too. A good angle I liked. Fishburne too, falls for his beautiful associate, her museum, a front for money laundering. I loved Goldblum in the first establishing scene, here. Fishburne says a line from Scarface, this movie, a reference of dialogue, scenes, clips used in so many other movies. This prompts Goldblum to recite a line, bouncing off of Fishburne's. Goldblum, puts his own funny spin on it, adding another line to it, but then again, Goldblum can be a funny guy. Fishburne keeps working his way up, selling drugs, living bigger and better than he ever has, and feeling so much like s..t for it. He even does his first kill, taking down a bad black dude, who shot down one of his younger female associates, earlier. And so he should, not only for that, but also, for taking an open leak on Fishburne's sleek shoes. He's finally swimming with the big fishes, an Italian Godfather, who's acquaintance is one of ugliness, rips a piece of jewellery from Fishburne's ear, where soon he meets the guy at top. Also too, we have that wonderful actor, Clarence (Mod Squad) Williams, the third, an unrelenting DEA agent, who busts Fishburne a couple of times, another pain the arse, he doesn't need. Fishburne recites a passage to William's in the absence of the latina girl, losing her battle with drugs. The dialogue works to pondering truth in this film, though it doesn't ring more true than in Fishburne's voice overs. Not many films do that. One of the writers here, worked on the Richard Gere movie, Internal Affairs, another tight solid plot movie. Deep Cover is obviously an anti drug movie, where all the baddies get their desserts, including Smith. It's a different and interesting drug movie, if being a movie experience in itself. It's informative as well, as we learn a thing or two about the long term effects of drugs, especially where the brain's concerned. Fresh and something different, Deep Cover certainly is. Don't worry, we do have a car chase, shootouts of adequate proportion, and violence, nasty at times, but minimized as in the use of it, with good performances, all around, especially the young girl.

Yes, it was somewhat violent at times, but 15 years later (post-Tarantino) it's nothing a woman who likes an intelligent, extremely well-acted, written and directed movie can't handle. I'm a late convert; I used to avoid movies that I thought might have too much violence. Considering some of the "torture porn" movies of the last few years, this one's easy on the eyes.That being said, this is now one of my all-time favorite movies. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoyed "New Jack City" plus anyone who's a fan of Mr. Laurence Fishburne and/or Jeff Goldblum. I loved the occasional poetry and especially the relationship between Fishburne's character, the undercover cop, and Clarence Williams III's character, a street cop. It was almost like a father-son type of interaction.Don't believe the few naysayers, SEE THIS MOVIE!

Where to begin in commenting about this film? Deep Cover - the low-budget motion picture that captivated moviegoers on its release in 1992 and thereafter with its multifarious blur of conventions - has become irreplaceable in this cineaste's film-loving career.It seemed indistinct enough at the time of its release. Like so many other films about cops and bad guys, Deep Cover promised little else from what we were used to. Since movie culture primed filmgoers for stories about police who kill to attempt justice, we expected little else from it. Actor Laurence Fishburne, perhaps best known for his roles in School Daze (1988) and Boyz N the Hood (1991), didn't seem out of place here (in his first lead role), while actor Jeff Goldblum definitely did.I missed the film in theaters.The film's storyline owes its uniqueness to the subversions it pulls off. Deep Cover builds into the mythical from what seems like a simple cop story, while laying the psychology of its protagonist Russell Stevens, Jr. (Fishburne) bare with its madcap plotting. A proper reading of it is facilitated by the words of a passing character early in the film: "That's the problem these days. People have no imagination." Imagination is exactly what is needed to absorb the narrative of a cop pretending to be a drug dealer, who eventually realizes he's a drug dealer pretending to be a cop. Russell, renamed John by DEA agent Gerald Carver (Charles Martin Smith) to engage his undercover operation, braves misadventure and danger to work his way into the mid-level drug operation of David Jason (Jeff Goldblum). The idea explained by Carver is to work through and ascend a pyramid topped by a high-level cocaine supplier and take him down via the operation. But John must brave Hell to reach his goal, which is introduced to him by the superior agent Carver who says he's "God." A truly fascinating scene in the film comes due to masculine grudgery between Jason and drug dealer Felix Barbosa (Gregory Sierra). It is the birthday party of Barbosa's aide Gopher (Sydney Lassick) and Felix is more than ready to question David's criminal toughness. Before the eyes of the assemblage gathered around a table, Felix taunts David until he loses his cool. Felix then requests that David play a "game" of hand-slapping with him. John's vocal objection falls upon deaf ears. David goes along with the brutal sport until he is injured and humiliated. As John and David leave the small gathering, John notes by voice-over that one of the men will eventually kill the other.John is brought aboard Jason's operation. While John argues that Jason needs a partner, Jason says he wants him as a courier. Jason explains his goal to John of introducing a practical synthetic cocaine to the market - a fitting ambition for a white husband who habitually lusts after younger black women and learns to murder for vindication. (The issue of interracial sex is given no short shrift in Duke's theatrical sci-fi film, by the way.) John finds a trustworthy friend in African art dealer Betty (Victoria Dillard), but only travels further along the path of righteous outrage. David's path to Nirvana is paved with black and Latino bodies. It should seem that John's moment of realization of killing a man with impunity might serve as a wake-up call. It doesn't. Only when John's neatly constructed role collapses before him, at Carver's behest, comes his awakening. Out-powered and frustrated, John realizes that he's acted as a puppet to the Feds. Fishburne rocks the screen with this mercurial persona of his creation. John takes his very first drink and leaves the sputtering Carver behind. Russell/John's rebirth is soon to come.The best term to describe John's resolution of the conflict between social hierarchical manipulation and spiritual salvation is vigilante justice. John must rewrite the rules of the game and reclaim Russell before it is too late. And he must do it while dealing with high-level drug suppliers and the Feds.Probably the most compelling aspect of Duke's film on its 1992 release and to date is its avant-garde form and content. David Jason's worldview could best be described as forcedly Edenic, whereas John Hull's plot at the film's end shows thought of Utopian character. The confusion that the John/Russell character suffers toward the film's climax is reminiscent of Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man. In each work, a black male protagonist struggles against a disturbingly fluid identity put upon him by society. This perhaps intentional "homage" to Ellison's classic waxes especially rhapsodic when John delivers free verse poetry on the spot and quotes crime writer Iceberg Slim when his luck runs out.Jeff Goldblum's David Jason is a product of genius, a brilliantly crafted greed warrior similar to, and better than, the one limned by Al Pacino's Satan in The Devil's Advocate. This is white liberalism gone psychotic. And as for Bill Duke's direction, it was never better realized as it is during Deep Cover's macho dog-fights, stark realizations, and camera tricks (the shot wherein a man walks across a frame and wipes it away to the next one has since become standard in black film), and it may never be again. Deep Cover ushered in the fragments of an emerging black film aesthetic. Maybe some day it will receive the critical overview it deserves.