Tale from the 'Hood

[March 24th, 2004] Donald Goines was a bad motherfucker. A middle-class kid who turned his back on a respectable life in favor of crime on the tough streets of Detroit's ghetto, Goines tried his hand at pimping, running numbers and hustling dope, all the while nursing a heroin monkey on his back. In 1965, during one of his several stretches in prison, he made his first failed attempt at writing. It wasn't until 1969 that a 33-year-old Goines, doing time for larceny, would write his first published book, Whoreson.

Whoreson was published by Holloway House in 1972, and over the next two years Goines would churn out an astounding 15 novels--all bestsellers--his creative fire no doubt fueled by his burning heroin addiction. Writing from firsthand experience, Goines crafted such hardboiled tales as Inner City Hoodlum, Black Gangster and Dopefiend--brutal, lurid tales brimming with the profane language of the streets.

Despite the underground popularity of Goines' work, which includes loyal readers in the worlds of hip-hop, Europe and prison, he remains relatively unknown in mainstream literary circles. And in the 30 years since his brutal murder in what has long been suspected to be a dope deal gone bad, Goines' collection of urban pulp thrillers has been largely ignored by Hollywood. Until now.

Never Die Alone is the second book by Goines to be translated to film--the first being the abysmal direct-to-video adaptation of Crime Partners--and the first to make it to the big screen. Rapper-turned-actor DMX stars as King David, a morally bankrupt dope dealer who returns to New York after 10 years to make amends for his past sins. But before David can redeem himself, he is attacked in the streets and mortally wounded. Aspiring writer Paul (David Arquette) witnesses the attack on David, who begs the man to not let him die alone. As a reward for staying at his side while he dies, David leaves all his worldly possession to Paul, including audio tapes of the gangster recounting the last decade of his life in crime. Paul is shocked and fascinated by what he hears on the tapes, unremorseful confessions of a man with no regard for human life--a man who, Paul will come to believe, deserved to die for what he did.

The greatest challenge of anyone adapting a Donald Goines novel to film is remaining true to the author's unrelentingly violent depiction of life in the ghetto. A straightforward cinematic interpretation of certain Goines novels would make Scarface look like Disney family fare. "It's such a stylized world that Goines created--even though it is based on reality--we had to pull back from the intensity of some of the scenes," said director Ernest Dickerson during a phone interview.

Despite toning down the brutal intensity of Goines' writing, Never Die Alone makes the transition to film with most of its hardcore edge intact. To their credit, Dickerson and first-time screenwriter James Gibson don't water down the King David character. In both the book and the film, he is a ruthless sociopath--a man who decides to get his lover strung out on heroin when she mocks him--and by the end of both, his death seems only just.

Shying away from the inept, low-budget trappings that define most of the contemporary direct-to-video "urban" thrillers, Never Die Alone emerges as more--a taut, neo-noir tale laced with a contemporary blaxploitation aesthetic. Building on Goines' edgy narrative that tracks three intersecting storylines as well as King David's first-person recounting of his misdeeds, Never Die Alone employs such popular noir conventions as voice-over narration and flashbacks within flashbacks.

"I started reading Goines when I was in college, and always thought his books were great film noir. And that's the way I approached it," says Dickerson. "My models, visually and stylistically, were the films of Jean-Pierre Melville--La Samouraï and Le Cercle Rouge--and the films of Kinji Fukasaku."

The biggest weakness of Never Die Alone is DMX, who also produced the film. Ten years ago, Lawrence Fishburne would have been perfect for King David. Today, Don Cheadle is best suited for the role. DMX gives it his best shot, but for all his charisma he's still just a rapper playing at being an actor. Fortunately, his performance is not terrible and is balanced out by Dickerson's keen vision, making Never Die Alone a stylish, entertaining tale of revenge and retribution.