Bloody tale exudes a brutish charm

Friday, March 26, 2004

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

The hero of "Never Die Alone" -- an incredibly violent and technically shoddy but undeniably absorbing black gangster movie -- is King David (rapper Earl Simmons, aka DMX), a nasty pimp and drug-pusher whom we first see in his coffin, just as he's about to be cremated.

MOVIE REVIEW

NEVER DIE ALONE

DIRECTOR: Ernest Dickerson

CAST: DMX, David Arquette, Michael Ealy

RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes

RATING: R for strong violence, drug use, sexuality and language

WHERE: Alderwood 7, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Everett 9, Galaxy Tacoma 6, Longston Place 14, Pacific Place, Parkway Plaza 12, Redmond Town Center

GRADE: C+

Cut to two days earlier and the man's just returned to his East Coast hometown after ripping off his boss and fleeing to Los Angeles several years before, and now contritely wants to make amends, pay his debt and "assume his responsibilities."

But before that can happen, he's mortally wounded by a young hoodlum with a grudge (Michael Ealy), and before he passes away in a hospital ER, he signs over all his worldly possessions to the young white journalist (David Arquette) who was kind enough to take him there.

These possessions include a somewhat gaudy pimpmobile, a stash of cash in the trunk and a set of autobiographical audio tapes on which King David has been narrating his ugly past in all its gory detail, and which the journalist, of course, finds especially fascinating.

So the movie follows three tracks: 1) King David's flashback adventures in Los Angeles stringing out half the movie colony; 2) the journalist's peril at becoming King David's beneficiary; and 3) the fate of King David's assassin, who becomes the movie's most sympathetic character.

Be warned that this is not for the faint of heart. The fun includes a man stabbed through his eye with an ice-pick, a uniformed schoolgirl blown into confetti by a shotgun and a nice mother kicked half to death in front of her children.

But the script (based on a novel by Donald Goines) is tight and well-constructed, director Ernest Dickerson ("Juice") has a feel for film-noir aesthetics, DMX exudes a certain brutish charisma and the movie is as morbidly compelling as a good train wreck.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com