Harlem Nights

Harlem Nights
Promotional poster for Harlem Nights
Directed by	Eddie Murphy
Produced by	Mark Lipsky Robert D. Wachs
Written by	Eddie Murphy
Starring	Eddie Murphy Richard Pryor
Music by	Herbie Hancock
Cinematography	Woody Omens
Edited by	George Bowers Alan Balsam
Production company	Eddie Murphy Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	November 17, 1989 (1989-11-17)
Running time	116 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$30,000,000 (USA)
Box office	$60,864,870 (USA) $95,900,000 (Worldwide)

Harlem Nights is a 1989 crime comedy film starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor and directed by Murphy.

The film featured Michael Lerner, Danny Aiello, Redd Foxx (in his last film before his death in 1991), Della Reese and Murphy's brother Charlie Murphy. Murphy and Pryor star as a team running a nightclub in late-1930s Harlem, New York while contending with gangsters and corrupt police officials.

Murphy wrote and directed the film (Murphy was nominated for Worst Director at the 10th Golden Raspberry Awards, his only directorial effort; the film "won" Worst Screenplay) and served as an executive producer. He had always wanted to direct and star in a period piece, as well as work with Pryor, whom he considered his greatest influence in stand-up comedy.^[1]

Plot

In Harlem, New York, 1918, Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) has a dice game. Nearly killed by an angry customer, Ray is saved when 7-year-old errand boy "Quick" shoots the man. After being told that his parents are dead, Ray decides to raise Quick.

Twenty years later, Ray and Quick (Eddie Murphy) run a nightclub called "Club Sugar Ray", with a brothel in back run by madam Vera (Della Reese). Smalls (Thomas Mikal Ford), who works for the gangster Bugsy Calhoun (Michael Lerner), and Miss Dominique LaRue (Jasmine Guy), Calhoun's mistress, arrive. Smalls and LaRue have come to see the club and report to Calhoun. Later, Calhoun sends corrupt detective Phil Cantone (Danny Aiello) to threaten Ray with shutting the club down unless Calhoun gets a cut.

Ray decides to shut down, but first wants to make sure he's provided for his friends and workers. An upcoming fight between challenger Kirkpatrick and defending champion (and loyal Club Sugar Ray patron) Jack Jenkins (Stan Shaw) will draw a lot of money in bets. Ray plans to place a bet on Kirkpatrick to make Calhoun think Jenkins will throw the fight. Ray also plans to rob Calhoun's booking houses. A sexy callgirl named Sunshine (Lela Rochon) is used to distract Calhoun's bag man Richie Vinto (Vic Polizos).

Calhoun thinks Smalls is stealing and has him killed. Quick is noticed near the scene by Smalls' brother Reggie (Arsenio Hall) who tries to kill him. Quick kills him and his men. Calhoun sends LaRue to seduce and kill Quick. Quick realises he is being set up and kills LaRue.

Calhoun has Club Sugar Ray burned down. Sunshine seduces Richie Vinto and tells him she has a pickup to make. Richie agrees to pick her up on the way to collect money for Calhoun. Richie gets into an accident orchestrated by Ray's henchman Jimmy (Charlie Murphy). Ray and Quick, disguised as policemen, attempt to arrest Richie, telling him that the woman he's riding around with is a drug dealer. Quick attempts to switch the bag that held Calhoun's money with the one Sunshine had placed in the car but two white policemen arrive. Richie explains that he's on a run for Bugsy Calhoun, so they let him go.

The championship fight begins. Two of Ray's men blow up Calhoun's club, to retaliate against Calhoun for destroying Club Sugar Ray. At the fight, Calhoun realizes it was not fixed as he thought, and hears that his club has been destroyed. Quick and Ray arrive at a closed bank. Cantone arrives, having followed them. Ray's crew seal him inside the bank vault.

Richie arrives to deliver Calhoun's money, but tells Calhoun that the bags of money had been switched with bags of 'heroin', which turns out to be sugar. Calhoun then deduces that Ray was behind the plot. Vera visits Calhoun and tells them (as part of an act) where to find Ray and Quick. Believing her, Bugsy and his men arrive at Ray's house. One of his men trips a bomb, killing them all. Ray and Quick pay off the two white men who disguised themselves as the policemen earlier. Ray and Quick take one last look at Harlem, knowing they can never return and that there will never be another city like it. They depart for an unknown location as the credits ensue.

Cast

Awards

Won

• Golden Raspberry Award:
  • Worst Screenplay (Eddie Murphy)^[2]

Nominated

• Academy Awards:
  • Academy Award for Best Costume Design (Joe I. Tompkins)^[3]

• Golden Raspberry Award
  • Worst Director (Eddie Murphy)^[2]

Reception

At review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 21% positive reviews with an average score of 3.8/10.^[4] Gene Siskel was both bored and offended by it and later called it one of the worst films of 1989.^[5] Michael Wilmington noted in the Los Angeles Times that the "production design lacks glitter. The movie also lacks the Harlem outside the gaudy gangland environs, the poverty, filth, pain, humanity, humor and danger that feeds these mobster fantasies."^[6]

Movie theatre shooting controversy

On November 17, 1989, two men were shot and killed inside AMC Americana 8 theater in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan. According to witnesses quoted in the Detroit Free Press, the shooting happened on opening night taking place during a shooting spree in the film's opening. A 22-year-old woman, who panicked and ran into traffic, was in critical condition two days later at the city's Providence Hospital; her name was withheld by police. Less than an hour after the shooting, police arrived at the theatre to find a 24-year-old Detroit man who shot an officer. The gunman was wounded when the officer shot him back in the theatre parking lot. The incident caused the theatre chain to cancel showings of Harlem Nights. One resident of the area, D'Shanna Watson, said:

There were so many people in the theater and there was so much going on, they stopped the movie three times.^[7]

Later that night, brawlers were ejected from a Sacramento theater showing Harlem Nights. Their feud continued in a parking lot and ended with gunshots. Two 24-year-old men were seriously injured. An hour later, Marcel Thompson, 17, was shot to death in a similar fight at a theater in Richmond, California. When police stopped the projection of Harlem Nights to find suspects, an hour-long riot erupted. In Boston, Mayor Raymond Flynn saw so many fistfights taking place in a crowd leaving Harlem Nights that he at first threatened to close the theater down but decided to tighten police security at the theatre. Mayor Flynn blamed the film for the riot, stating that it "glorifies violence." However, Raymond Howard, a lieutenant of the Richmond police department, defended the film, saying, "There's nothing wrong with the show. But this tells me something about the nature of kids who are going to see these shows."^[8]

If there's a fight at McDonald's, what does that have to do with McDonald's?... If there's a fight at Giant stadium, are you going to blame the Giants? Of course not It's not about the Eddie Murphy movie.^[8]

—Bob Wachs, Eddie Murphy's manager, on the movie theatre incidents, December 4, 1989.

Box office

Opening in North America in mid-November 1989, the movie debuted at No.1 its opening weekend.^[9] It grossed $16,096,808 during those first three days and would go on to collect a total of $60,864,870 domestically at the box office.^[10] Despite a fair gross, the film was considered a box office bomb by the studio, earning roughly half of Murphy's earlier box office successes Coming to America and Beverly Hills Cop II from the previous two years.

See also

• 2012 Aurora shooting

References

External links

• Harlem Nights at the Internet Movie Database
• Harlem Nights at Rotten Tomatoes
• Harlem Nights at Box Office Mojo