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3.7
1,916 Ratings

King of New York

Trailer
Directed by Abel Ferrara
United States, Italy, 1990
Action, Crime, Drama

Synopsis

Frank White, a ruthless drug lord, is released from prison and wants to redeem his past by using his drug profits to build a hospital for underprivileged kids. He challenges his fellow criminals to participate, but when they refuse he has to do things the hard way…

Synopsis

King of New York is not available at this time. Instead, check out Claire Denis's White Material, which is currently showing on MUBI.

White Material
Claire Denis
King of New York Directed by Abel Ferrara
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Awards & Festivals

Locarno International Film Festival

2011

Independent Spirit Awards

1991 | Nominee: Best Cinematography

International Film Festival Rotterdam

1993

San Sebastián International Film Festival

1990

2011

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Cast & Crew

Articles from the Notebook

Video Essay: The Man Between—An Abel Ferrara Double Feature

Two classic stories of self-destruction directed by Abel Ferrara, “King of New York” (1990) and “4:44 Last Day on Earth” (2011).
Scout Tafoya

No One Wants to Be Saved: Abel Ferrara and the Apocalypse

Rarely do the protagonists of American cinema come across as so tortured and difficult to forgive as in the films of Abel Ferrara.
Christina Newland
1

The Beautiful and The Damned: Close-Up on Abel Ferrara’s “King of New York”

Abel Ferrara’s iconic genre film marks a turning point for the director from shoestring B-pictures to the films that made him famous.
James Slaymaker
1

Our Daily Bread #3

An epic journey of images through Cimino, Mann, Ferrara, Bertolucci, to von Sternberg and back again.
Neil Bahadur
20

Critics reviews

Visual tricks (combining the micro and the macro, the private and the public) will reoccur throughout the film, such as in the iconic image of White looking down at the city from his hotel room, the nocturnal city lights obscuring his face, the makeshift super-imposition simultaneously indulging Frank’s grandiose ambitions while emphasizing that his illusion of control can’t be sustained.
June 16, 2017
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A dialectical masterpiece that’s even better and less silly than I remembered, King of New York is anchored by a complex moralism with a dash of fatalistic cynicism that cuts awfully deep in a year of police shootings, dashed political dreams and, of course, more of the same ol’-same ol’.
November 30, 2016
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The film never made a bid for critical respectability like gangster contemporaries like GoodFellas and Miller’s Crossing, but it deserves its place among them.
April 26, 2004
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