Two criminals are engaged in a drug deal with a Hispanic kingpin. They verify the cocaine's potency, and even agree to a hike in the price. They nonchalantly hand him the payment. He opens the briefcase to discover dozens of Tampons. Perplexed, the boss exclaims, "What's this?" One of the hoods, still smiling, replies, "It's for the bullet holes, man." Then they gun him and his bodyguards down.

This is one of the first scenes of King of New York, directed by independent action/thriller maestro Abel Ferrera and starring Christopher Walken, Larry Fishburne, David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, Victor Argo and early parts for Steve Buscemi and Harold Perrineau (Lost). It revolves around Frank White (Walken), a recently paroled NYC drug lord taking back his territory, while presenting his profits as a donation to a children's hospital. He has celebrity status and several girlfriends (including his lawyer). He occasionally participates in murderous raids on his competitors. He earns the admiration of the public, the trust of his ghetto , the ire of other criminals, and the downright outrage of the police. This duality lends a sinister resemblance to a Robin Hood of the drug trade, except that we know him to be a cold-blooded killer.

I was much less impressed with this film than what Ferrera followed it up with, the pulpy character study Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel in the lead. They bear several similarities; each contain a character that appears as a hypocrisy to all but themselves (Keitel strives to find and punish a nun's rapist while carrying out crimes of his own), and their strongest moments are when the melodrama reaches such a point that it borders on farce. Bad Lieutenant is chock full of them, but King of New York has a few of its own, proving Ferrera to be the Douglas Sirk of crime drama. (If you haven't seen Written on the Wind, you don't know the first thing about melodramatics.)

Let me say that Walken was perfectly cast in this film. As the enigmatic crime lord-turned-humanitarian Frank White, he channels his mystery through an icy stare and overconfident threat. How did this pale skeleton of a man obtain the services of his almost entirely black enforcers? Possibly because he lets them use his luxurious penthouse suite at the Plaza Hotel, possibly because of his impressive dance moves, possibly because Fishburne's Jimmy Jump is the only one in the film crazier than White. Fishburne's portrayal of the deranged second-in-command is also the only one worth noting; the cops played by Snipes, Caruso (CSI: Miami) and Ferrera favorite Argo receive minimal development and deliver wooden, two-dimensional performances. It was a surprise treat to see Buscemi (the coke-testing other thug in the drug deal scene) and Perrineau (the leader of a gang that ignorantly tries to rob Walken), but the script's cliche-ridden dialogue diminished the joy in these discoveries. I'll admit that the labyrinthe plot made it hard to predict who would come out in the end, but superfluous action sequences and absurd finale undermined all that the film's style tried to achieve.

Walken delivers a speech near the end, in which he sums up his previous murders as justified, given his rivals' involvement in enterprises such as immigrant exploitation and child prostitution. You gotta give it to him that his delivery of this monologue almost made up for the flaws I had previously witnessed. Oh, if it had only ended there...I give King of New York two and a half pitchforks; Walken goes above and beyond with what he's given, but he and Ferrera's gritty depiction of a philanthropic gangster and his enterprises fall under the weight of a shoddy script and supporting cast.