Deep Cover (1992)

It's funny to me that 28 years ago, the only reason that I knew that a film called Deep Cover existed was because of a Gangsta Rap track of the same name by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. The other funny thing is that I waited till now to check the film out, but better late than never is what I always say. The film stars Laurence Fishburne (Boyz n the Hood) as Russell Stevens Jr., a cop with a bit of a past. You see when he was a kid, he saw his father rob a liquor store only to be shot in the back and killed before he could get away. Russell swore that he would never lead the same life that his father did and he became a cop. Well one day, he is tasked with going deep undercover as a drug dealer to try and take down a drug dealing ring that is looking to expand it's horizons. The film also stars Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park) as David, Gregory Sierra (The Towering Inferno) as Barbosa, Roger Guenveur Smith (Dope) as Eddie, Clarence Williams III (Tales From The Hood) as Taft, René Assa (Baywatch) as Guzman, Victoria Dillard (Coming To America) as Betty, Charles Martin Smith (The Untouchables) as Carver, Julio Oscar Mechoso (Planet Terror) as Hernandez, and the film was directed by Bill Duke (Commando).

For the most part, it was a decent film in the fact that it kept my attention for the whole film and why not it has Jeff Goldblum as a gangster wannabe drug dealer in it. For the most part, I was just not impressed with the writing in this film because some of it felt rushed and to be honest I could have done without the child angle. We already know that Fishburne's character is a good guy, but I suppose that the kid represents the innocence that he once had before he went deep undercover. I thought Clarence Williams III was his usual brilliant self playing some sort of intense, whacked out character, but the question is did he know that Fishburne was a cop? He would always preach the religion stuff and tell them that they were the same, but in the end I think that Fishburne sort of looked at him like he represented a father figure in some weird way. Other than the writing, I thought that everyone did a fantastic job as far as the acting was concerned, but Fishburne had this moment where it was supposed to be a loss of his moral code. It's that moment when a character in a film has lived to a certain code for a while, but then something happens that he goes against it and that happened to Fishburne's character, but I wish they had expanded on it better. If you love old 90's gangster/undercover cop films then this is one to give a shot to for at least Goldblum's performance which was fantastic. I am going to give the film an C+/B- (somewhere in there) for a final grade.