The weakest of the three is KING OF NEW YORK, though it seems to have the biggest following of late. That's surely due to the movie's charismatic star, Christopher Walken, who's carved out a niche playing charismatic bad guys (INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO host James Lipton once told of being out with Walken and running into a gang of African-American youths, who took a look at Walken and proclaimed him the coolest white man on the planet). And certainly, he does a good job here. He plays Frank White, a drug dealer just released from prison. With the help of his old associates, led by Jimmy Jump (Laurence Fishburne), he soon establishes control of his old haunts. Of course, he also claims to have charitable motives; he wants to help the city renew a hospital for the poor neighborhood. But three cops - the aging Bishop (Victor Argo), and young hotshots Dennis (David Caruso) and Thomas (Wesley Snipes) - know White is still scum (and tell him as such), and in the case of Dennis and Thomas, will do anything to nail White.
Ferrara and writer Nicholas St. John certainly have a good idea here; they want to show the mystique of the drug dealer as being all hype, especially when someone like White tries to play media hero. The problem here, which also shows up in later Ferrara-St. John collaborations like THE ADDICTION, is they don't have the script to back it up. There are some good individual scenes, like when Dennis and Thomas confront White for the first time, but none of them really add up. And while the acting is pretty good across the board (you can especially see Caruso's talent here), it doesn't help. Still, you have to admire Ferrara for going against the trend of mythologizing the gangster.
Like GOODFELLAS, Peter Medak's THE KRAYS is based on a true story. Ronald and Reggie Kray, twin brothers, were gangsters who terrorized Britain in the 1950's, while at the same time being glamorous to the rest of the populace (Monty Python fans will know this from a sketch they did spoofing the Krays; I believe it was called the Dinsdale Brothers). Part of it may have been do to the fact that they were young and good looking, and part of it may also have been due to their unusual methods (they often used swords instead of guns). But a lot of it was due to how they tried to present themselves as gentleman, thanks to the influence of their domineering mother Violet, whose love for them left little room for anything else.
