Harlem Nights

I've got a backlog of movies that I recorded during one free preview weekend or another, and I generally try to get through them as they come up on the premium channels again. This means that I now get the chance to blog about Harlem Nights, which has an airing tonight at 11:30 PM on HBO Comedy.

The movie starts off with a scene in Harlem, 1918. Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) runs an underground floating craps game somewhere in Harlem. One night during the game, a young boy who runs errands for Ray shows up, much to the consternation of one of the gamblers, who claims that kids bring him bad luck. Ray has the reaction of "yeah, right", and besides, he's the one running the game, so the kid stays. The other guy craps out, and then threatens to knife Ray to death if he doesn't get his money back. Ray has a gun for just this sort of thing, but wouldn't you know it, the kid has already taken it to shoot the other guy dead just in case.

Twenty years pass. Ray, having found out the kid is an orphan, raised the kid as his own son, giving him the nickname Quick (Eddie Murphy). Ray and Quick are running a swanky but thoroughly gray-market at best club called Sugar Ray's, which offers gambling and a brothel run by Ray's friend Madame Vera (Della Reese before she was fondled by an angel). Among the people running the craps tables is Bennie (Redd Foxx), who had been at that fateful craps game two decades earlier.

However, the sort of club that Ray runs is usually the province of gangsters. Bugsy Calhoune (Michael Lerner) is the gangster who seems to have a monopoly on such clubs in Manhattan, so he sends one of his black enforcers, Tommy Smalls, to check out Sugar Ray's to try to find out how much they make so that Bugsy can give Sugar Ray an offer he can't refuse. Tommy brings along the lovely Creole woman Dominique La Rue (Jasmine Guy) along, and Quick immediately falls for her, not realizing that it's a trap. For not only is Bugsy a violent mobster, he's got corrupt police on his side in the form of detective Phil Cantone (Danny Aiello).

Eventually, Bugsy does make Sugar Ray that offer, which amounts to taking two-thirds off the top, so you can understand why Sugar Ray wouldn't want to take it even though there's a good chance it will lead to him and everybody else high up in the club getting shot. And indeed, Quick does have to run for his life and lay low when Bugsy starts sending people after him. So Sugar Ray comes up with a plan to double cross Bugsy.

Bugsy will be handling the betting for the boxing title fight, between black champion Jenkins and a white Irish challenger. The thinking is that all the white people will make the sucker bet on the white guy even though Jenkins is a heavy favorite. So Sugar Ray and his associates will also bet on the white guy to make Bugsy think that Jenkins has been paid to throw the fight, and try to cover things himself. Meanwhile, Sugar Ray will take the money bet on the fight while it's being transported.

Harlem Nights, in addition to starring Eddie Murphy, was also directed by him, and that's where a lot of the flaws of the movie come in. It's a formulaic, by-the-numbers movie, which isn't necessarily a terrible thing, beyond the fact that there's nothing original here. Heck, it was already almost 20 years since movies like Shaft started mainstreaming black crime movies, although I don't think most of them were period pieces like Harlem Nights.

The other problem the movie has is that it's not quite sure what genre it wants to be. Tonight's showing is on HBO Comedy, and my box guide has it listed as a comedy, but it's really more of a lighter drama that has some humor to break up the tension. It's not as serious as the 1930s gangster movies, but it's not a straight comedy either, and that doesn't always work considering how many of the leads had a reputation for comedy instead of drama.

Still, Harlem Nights is an interesting misfire that certainly deserves at least one viewing. There's a reason why it was a critical failure but reasonably successful commercially on its first release back in 1989.