Never Die Alone

DMX takes a turn in a gritty, hardcore gangster flick that has the thematic elements of the gang-banger lifestyle. You know, the requisite drugs, guns, sex, low-riding cars etc. His other movies, Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, and Cradle To The Grave have him in a nice guy role. However, this one is entirely different and X gives a pretty good performance, well, at least for a rapper with little movie experience.

X plays King David, a drug dealer who has led a turbulent life. I say has because as the movie starts, you hear his voice while you see his body lying in a coffin. So, how is this movie going to play out if the main character is already dead your saying? Well, that's pretty easy. There's these really cool things called flashbacks. This story occurs two days earlier, well, actually spans quite a time, but the main part is two days. The sordid storyline is of David's life and how he came back to the town in which he started his own drug running with the help of a man named Moon (Clifton Powell), who lent him thousands of dollars worth of heroin.

Moon is your typical drug lord, with two women hanging all over his body with the big, buff bodyguards standing vigil nearby, ready to spring to action at his every beck and call. His main man, Mike (Michael Ealey), along with another young buck named Blue (Antwon Tanner) is sent out to collect the 30 G's (G's is slang for thousands, for all you non-hip people. C'mon, get with the program!) Mike is told to specifically not waste David, but his vengeance toward him is unbridled. He sends his sister, Ella (Drew Sidora), as a distraction and Blue sticks a gun to his head and forces him out of his low-riding car. David, being the street-wise guy, sneakily hides an icepick in his hand. He actually cracks a funny line here, one of the few in this movie, saying to Blue, "Hey Scarface, tell your boy to chill...Your a regular Tony Montana, aren't you?" referring to the long scar running down his cheek. Things get heated and Mike stabs David hard in the chest, but before they can make a clean break, David stabs Blue in the eye, in a very quick and violent move, which is also quite graphic, as you can imagine. The men ten take off, with Mike's sister driving.

A white journalist named Paul (David Arquette, who really looks out of place in this movie) runs out of the bar in which he frequently visits to get drunk out of his mind and stumbles across David, lying prostrate and bleeding all over the curbside. He begs "the white boy" to get him off the ground so he won't die there on the street. Paul drives him to a hospital where he dies. He gets an unexpected gift though, as David leaves in his possession the car, his jewelry, and money, which he gives a partial sum to the doctor to let him just take it and run, without having to check everything with the authorities. He finds the hollowed-out Bible in which David has left his life-story on audiotapes. This is the narrative throughout the whole movie, with DMX's grating voice telling the story of his life. It's pretty cool; he's narrating his own death!

Meanwhile, Moon finds out the transaction didn't go well and wants Mike and Blue dead. So his men go out to take them out in a garage in which Moon has connections. A brutal and violent (what other kind is there) shooting occurs, with Blue getting his brains literally blown out (poor guy, first his eye poked out with a icepick, then a shotgun shell to the head) and Ella getting shot almost point-blank with another shotgun round. You see her body blown backwards with dramatic force. Mike guns the two hitmen down, but is left with nothing, his bloody and dying sister in his arms. He didn't really treat her that well in the first place, pushing her around and slapping her in the face. Very misogynic, as is the theme centered around all the women in this movie. But that is what you come to expect with gangster flicks, no?

Well, the rest of the movie is with Mike trying to hunt down Moon and Paul figuring out David's life through the tapes he found. We see David in a brutal light, as he goes through different towns and picks up women, screws them, literally and figuratively, and then discards them when they are totally strung out and dependent. You see, whenever a girl starts to not want him anymore, he replaces their coke supply with heroin and makes them a drug addict beyond control, knowing full well they will come crawling back to him for more. He also uses them to hook him up with their friends, as to make money by selling them coke.

You really see what drug use can do to a person. This movie can maybe be accused of glorifying drug use, such as the notion of having tight rides and nice clothes and such, but really shows the consequences of getting hooked. Both of David's girls, or b*@ches as he so fondly calls them, (insert roll of the eyes here for all you women reading this) Janet (Jennifer Sky) and Juanita (Reagan Gomez-Preston) are quite beautiful when he first meets up with them. But, when they start to become dependent, their beauty is masked by running noses, vomiting all the time, dark circles under their eyes, their complexions becoming lighter and lighter, and other such effects. It really is quite disturbing to watch, especially when Juanita, without hesitation, starts to shoot the heroin in her veins. The movie says that it is easy for her, since she is a diabetic, but that sure doesn't make it any easier to watch. It's also painful to watch David use these girls in such a brutal way, as he actually has sex with a crying, sobbing Juanita before he gives her the heroin. Pretty brutal. Plus, when she threatens to call the police on him, he gives her heroin mixed with battery acid to kill her.

We also find out that David impregnated a woman named Edna awhile back and got her strung out as well. When she calls him to ask him for money and threatens to call the cops, he comes to her house and beats her up, while her son comes rushing out to protect her. David brutally bashes the boy in the head with a glass, giving him quite a cut. Ah, are we getting why Mike hates David so much? David laces her heroin with the ever-present battery acid, so once she ingests it into her system, she is a nasty, convulsing body on the floor, with young Mike looking on, helpless to do anything. He gets his revenge with Moon however, as he shoots him to death in a hot tub, with Paul helping him to escape the cops in the end by offering up David's car. Ironic huh?

The end finds Paul trying to get the story of David's life published, with his boss not finding it amusing in the least, telling him that it's all just a story. Paul buries him properly, as he so requested. David's narration ends with images of all the people that have been killed in the movie, which is to say, quite a lot, along with Mike driving off into oblivion.

This movie tries to paint David off as some redemptive killer, but I don't buy it one bit. He's way too brutal, misogynic, and just plain mean to be put in that light. Absolutely no kids should ever see this, with its brutal depictions of violence, graphic sex, raw language, and several drug incidents. I really didn't enjoy this movie that much; way too dark for my liking, even though that is something I should have expected, coming from a title Never Die Alone. I like DMX as a rapper, but this movie almost made me not like him at all. I enjoy his other aforementioned movies much better. Making him into a bad guy is fine; that can eventually give him some range, like Denzel Washington turning the trick in Training Day. However, don't make the main character that unlikeable to the point of disgust. Anyways, if you like DMX, you probably will see this. If you don't, your not really missing that much.

Ah, I almost forgot. The special features on this DVD is nothing to write home about (your mother wouldn't be too pleased anyway!). A commentary by X and the director, Ernest Dickerson is long and quite boring, given the movies isn't that long in the first place, at a fast-paced 88 minutes. X leaves halfway in anyway, which is not a big loss, considering half the time he spends on his ever-present cell phone or screaming out "F*@k it!" The eleven deleted scenes give you nothing special, while the making-of featurette is plain ol' advertising fluff. Not interesting in the least.