DMX brings his music persona to film again as he plays himself
in his newest vanity project, “Never Die Alone.”
Although he manages to refrain from using his patented growl, he
couldn’t resist using the film’s soundtrack to dump out
two new tracks. Despite all of this, the film somehow manages to be
tense and surprisingly entertaining.

The film’s redemption from DMX comes from the story by
Donald Goines, a popular black pulp-fiction writer of the
’70s whose novel serves as the source material. His focus on
the seedy underbelly of urban living translates well to the screen,
and director Ernest Dickerson (“Juice”), a longtime
cinematographer for Spike Lee, comes into his own with a visually
gritty and well-focused directorial effort.

DMX plays King David, a vile drug-runner who has just been
released from prison and has hazy intentions of finding redemption.
He obviously fails, as he is shown in his coffin in the first shot.
However, the movie is able to maintain the suspense lacking in many
films that open with a lead character’s death.

An intriguing narrative device recounts David’s past
through cassettes left to an aspiring journalist, Paul, (David
Arquette) while the repercussions of David’s death
reverberate throughout the criminal underworld.

So much of the gangster genre worships at the alter of
“Scarface,” and “Alone’s” inability
to stay away is where it falters. Actual references to
“Scarface” and Tony Montana, along with the
proclamation that “this is not a Quentin Tarantino
movie” add a degree of referentialism that isn’t
needed.

The acting of Arquette and DMX isn’t impressive, but
it’s realistic. Arquette is the trust-fund white boy who just
can’t stay out of Harlem and DMX is the type of guy that
would switch heroin with coke to keep a girlfriend as dependent on
him as the drugs.

Goines himself was an addict who wrote to support his addiction
and understood the trappings of the lifestyle. So often these
stories come off as glamorizations of the drugs-and-guns lifestyle
and miss the harsh reality that is present. Goines was murdered at
the age of 36, and the film’s ending is able to give a bit of
redemption that he himself wasn’t able to find.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.