Movie reviews, production notes, and more! - "Mr. Untouchable"

Movie Review: Mr. Untouchable

ROUNDUP REVIEW: MR. UNTOUCHABLE (3 stars) As interesting, certainly, as "American Gangster" (which opens next week), and operating with a truer street sense of the characters involved, director Marc Levin's documentary deals with heroin kingpin Nicky Barnes and his various associates. Nonjudgmental without being morally dense, the film makes human sense out of an inhuman example of addiction capitalism, `70s style. And as we know the `70s (BEGIN ITALICS) never (END ITALICS) go out of style. When Barnes made the cover of the New York Times Magazine in 1977, wearing his red, white and blue necktie, Harlem's worst-kept gangster secret - the king of the heroin trade, living the "Superfly" life - attracted the attention of, among others, President Jimmy Carter, who requested that this public menace be brought to justice. Eventually he was caught, but in terms of dollars and cents Barnes had a good run, albeit a run littered with the corpses of his business rivals and his smacked-out, track-marked customers. Then Barnes flipped and gave the feds name after name, leading to conviction after conviction, and today lives in relative seclusion (he's filmed here only in shadow), while many former colleagues remain behind bars. The documentary techniques employed by Levin are standard-issue, ... read more Official Web Site: http://www.mruntouchablemovie.com/ Back to main movie page Showing Today at: Click here for other showings