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BY BROOKE HOLGERSON
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Based on the Donald Goines pulp novel of the same name, this DMX effort from Ernest Dickerson (Juice) will be seen by many as the latest movie starring a rapper trying to cross over into film, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but they would be selling it short. Dickerson started out as Spike Lee’s cinematographer, and he infuses this otherwise formulaic tale of a gangster’s rise and fall with beautiful camerawork and images. DMX’s King David is a drug dealer and all-around bastard who returns home after years on the run to make amends and finds his past catching up with him; David Arquette plays a wanna-be writer who becomes fascinated with unraveling King David’s past. From the opening monologue voiced by a dead man à la Sunset Boulevard, Dickerson blends film noir conventions with the gritty violence of an urban thriller, and the movie’s mishmash of styles is its greatest strength. Yet though DMX shows real presence, he isn’t much of an actor, and Arquette spends most of his scenes squinting into the camera to show us he’s thinking. The DMX fans who see the film just for him will miss the point — but so will you if you dismiss Never Die Alone just because of him. (90 minutes)
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