Abel Ferrara
1990
109 minutes
You've seen this a few times in your youth. In your childhood, the weekly TV Guide had a section at the beginning that listed the ratings of every film that was shown on cable TV along with the reason for that rating. This was so that children could cross-reference cable movies to see if they had any good stuff in them. You learned quickly that if a film was rated PG-13 or R because of "adult themes", it was usually some boring shit like abortion or adultery. Movies with "violence" or "graphic violence" were bound to be fum if that was what you were in the mood for. Anything with "nudity" was usually boobs, and the rather rare "graphic nudity" (or however it was phrased) indicated either extended boobs or, best of all, full frontal female nudity. (Full frontal male nudity was pretty rare in those days.) "Brief nudity" was a bit chancy. Usually it meant butts, and even worse it often meant men's butts.
King of New York was pretty much like hitting a royal flush in all these categories, the kind of film that was appointment viewing back when internet access was either non-existent or dial-up, and spotting any kind of naughty content meant UUDecoding a relatively large file with a long download time. Although, upon rewatch, it seems pretty tame these days compared to the way TV Guide made it sound.
This was your first exposure to Christopher Walken, and essentially your first exposure to antiheroes in general. Once you got past the nudity, you were pretty confused about the whole nature of whether he was supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy and if you were supposed to be rooting for him.
As with many things in life, you learned that on the whole morality itself is pretty grey. The world is cold and uncaring, and sometimes the only way to survive is to throw your lot in with whoever gives you the best chance. Bad people are always bad people, and even supposedly good people will consider you fair game to sharpen their claws on if they can talk themselves into believing you to be a bad guy, which is quite easy if you don't look and act like them. It's good to have a code, but abandon the idea of putting any particular person in the good-guy bad-guy category. For many people, they can talk themselves into thinking that anyone who seems defenseless is a potential target. Act accordingly.
Time to choose something different: