Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
'Sugar' Ray is the owner of an illegal casino and must contend with the pressure of vicious gangsters and corrupt police who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organised crime and police corruption in the 1920s, any dastardly trick is fair.
Harlem Nights is a vanity project from Eddie Murphy that assembles a remarkable cast—Murphy, Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, Danny Aiello—but squanders much of their talent on a thin, meandering script. The plot is a fairly routine 1920s gangster yarn with corrupt cops and mob rivalry that rarely surprises. The chemistry between Murphy and Pryor has genuine moments but the film struggles to decide whether it's a comedy or a crime drama, landing awkwardly between both. Cinematography is competent period-piece work with nice costume and production design but nothing cinematically distinctive. The ending resolves things predictably and without much payoff. The novelty of seeing these comedy legends together in a period crime setting is the film's main selling point, but the execution feels derivative of better films in both genres.