A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman
The first one of these I wrote I was open and candid about my depression. I didn’t intend to get that real but going back to a movie you didn’t even think about for a while always has some reasoning. Never Die Alone is a movie I have never forgotten. In my teen years films about the darkness of the human condition really spoke to me. I am something of a cynic who stares off into the great void wondering when the great hammer of death is going to drop but in recent years I have started to embrace love, joy and happiness as parts of life I need to open myself up to but Never Die Alone has stayed with me. Never Die Alone is a hateful and angry movie about narcissism, self loathing and self destruction. It is a movie about the black experience that never paints crime as something sexy or wonderful. It paints it as a lonely life where all you cause his human suffering with every action you take when all you care about is money and power.
DMX plays King David, a drug dealer who returns to a dark unnamed East Coast city to settle one last score. In the process he is killed and having no one in the world he leaves his possessions to a writer played by David Arquette who discovers among those items a series of audio tapes where King laid out his whole life, warts and all. As Arquette listens on his discovers how much of a monster King is. Which is the first thing that stands out to me about this film and why I think it is important. Black Cinema often tries to make light of cruelties of drug abuse, poverty and the other ills of modern man. Many drug movies paint the dealer as misunderstood people just trying to survive or incredibly likable sociopaths. For example Wesley Snipes in New Jack City is filled with innate charm and even though he is evil a generation of rappers saw that and wanted to be Nino Brown. No one wants to be King David. Ernest Dickson’s direction makes damn sure of that. Even when King shows moments of humanity you are aware he is a virus. Even the movie King always sees himself as a pestilence moving from body to body ruining it as he goes with little to no shame or regret. DMX himself is also an awful person so it may not have been a stretch but it is wild that no other movie has done this.
Which leads to another reason why this film is important, DMX can act. DMX can act really well honestly. The steely hateful energy that DMX brings to this roll makes even the brightest set seem a few moments from turning to a pale grey. The psychology of the character goes deeper but the film only shows you what you need to know. We are living in a time where black cinema is it at its best. Films like Black Panther, Selma, and Moonlight have shown here is more to the black experience in America then violence and poverty. That black men and women can be complex characters but on that same not we can’t forgot how important it is to have stories that are about evil. There is a world where Never Die Alone is companion piece to Moonlight. Two different sides to the drug dealer but both showing the same thing. That it is a protective device. A shield of survival in a cruel world but I didn’t bring up the rise of black directors and black storyteller for no reason.
Never Die Alone is an amazing movie that deserves to be the progenitor of this movement. I never see it mentioned but the choices that director Ernest R Dickson makes are incredible. His eye for shots and his choice to bring on Matthew Libatique as DP is masterful. 4 years earlier Libatique did Requiem for Dream and his way of lighting joy and lighting depression are incredible. The way the writing weaves between two viewpoints with great strength is tough to really get right but he does. I think american cinema wasn’t ready for this movie and wasn’t ready to take it seriously. The rest of his filmography is strange but Dickson has a masterwork here that the deserves to be remembered.
Never Die Alone is a movie that needs a resurgence and it needs resurgence because in a time where we are calling out rapists, we are calling out abusers, we are calling out evil people we need to be reminded that art can’t ignore those people. It may be triggering for some to hear but for some they will never know the journey to have walked. The pain you have suffered but cinema is a lense into that. Never Die Alone makes you sick because you cannot imagine anyone like this existing but they do. King David is a monster, I cannot say that enough, he is a man who sees women as objects to be used and abused, he sees drugs as a way to control those around him and has a way to become more powerful but most of all he is a result of his own abuse. His abuse that continued on to cause others more pain. We are living through an epidemic of heroin abuse and we are living through opening of the blinds on the darkness in society.
We cannot forget. We cannot ignore. We cannot assume everyone knows. We cannot ignore that we all die alone judged by our actions.
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