Bill Duke’s 1992 second theatrical feature met with middling commercial and critical success, telling the story of an undercover cop infiltrating a Latin American drug ring operating in L.A. When Russell Stevens (Laurence Fishburne) was 10, he saw his cocaine-addicted father killed during a failed liquor store robbery.
A lifelong teetotaler and abstainer from narcotics, John is hired by a smarmy DEA agent (Charles Martin Smith) to bring down a couple of drug kingpins. Changing his name to John Hull, he starts on the street as a low-level dealer, where he is eventually noticed by both NYPD officer Taft (Clarence Williams III) and a crooked lawyer named David Jason (Jeff Goldblum), who is working in the drug trade.
Teaming up with Jason, Hull gains access to big honcho Barbosa (Gregory Sierra), but his new criminal life—which includes nice digs and an accomplice/lover (Victoria Dillard)—leads him to cross the proverbial legal line, even committing murder. And just as Hull has Barbosa in his sights, the DEA changes its mind in order to protect a Latin American political candidate further up the supply chain, forcing Hull to reexamine his beliefs, loyalties, and priorities.
Deep Cover manages to be both fairly predictable and somewhat implausible, with some especially leaden religious exhortation from Williams’s character, although it does also feature some solid action set-pieces and benefits from Goldblum’s traditionally quirky delivery of some memorable dialogue (“A man has two things in this world: his word and his balls. Or is that three things?”).
A rather surprising choice for the Criterion Collection, Deep Cover is presented with a new 4K digital restoration and extras including a new interview with director Bill Duke; a new conversation between film scholars Racquel J. Gates and Michael B. Gillespie about the film’s place within both the black film boom of the early 1990s and the noir genre; a new conversation between scholar Claudrena N. Harold and professor, DJ, and podcaster Oliver Wang about the film’s title track (Dr. Dre’s debut solo single, featuring Snoop Dogg) and its importance to the history of hip-hop; a panel discussion from 2018 with Duke and Fishburne, moderated by film critic Elvis Mitchell; and a leaflet with an essay by Gillespie. A strong optional purchase for film collections focusing on black filmmakers or a Black History Month film series.