X gonna give it to ya ... sort of

DMX's film career has essentially been what one might assume it'd be. Uninspired. He made his debut in hip-hop video stalwart Hype Williams' visually arresting if conceptually vacant hood saga Belly. He followed this up with a trio of slickly produced Joel Silver actioneers, i.e. Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds and Cradle 2 the Grave, each with varying degrees of success. His latest, Never Die Alone, is a throwback hybrid of blaxploitation and the hard-boiled crime yarns of yore (after all, the flick is based on a novel by late junkie author Donald Goines).\nNever Die Alone director Ernest Dickerson's cinematic career could easily be compared to his star's. Dickerson cut his teeth as a cinematographer, ably lensing many of his NYU classmate Spike Lee's early films. He later branched out into directing with one of the earliest albeit least effective urban films to proliferate the early '90s, Juice. This was followed by an onslaught of crap: Surviving the Game, a schlocky Hard Target rip-off which displaced Jean-Claude Van Damme with Ice-T, brain-dead guilty pleasures Demon Knight and the Adam Sandler/Damon Wayans starrer Bulletproof and lastly, the lamest (and that's a bold statement) horror flick ever committed to celluloid, Bones.\nSuffice it to say, both of these talented men haven't been working up to their respective potentials. Sadly, the same can be said for their latest venture.\nNever Die Alone casts DMX (in a performance which is equal parts inspired and insipid) as King David -- easily his most morally reprehensible role to date. This character is not above breaking a glass bottle across a child's face or turning women onto coke, switching their dosage to heroin without notice and ultimately, when these chickenheads start grating on his nerves, spiking them with car battery acid. Monstrous misogyny of this sort is rarely seen on screen.\nThe story's structure is reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard, as David's story unfolds posthumously via audiotapes obtained by a journalist (David Arquette, in a surprisingly restrained turn). The fact that David recorded his life's travails is unlikely; the voiceovers which ensue are even more so, "We reap what we sow. Payback's a motherfucker."\nThe film's saving grace is the sterling cinematography of Matthew Libatique (best known for his bravura work in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream). Gritty, flashy and assured - it's everything the flick wanted to be but failed. \nSo far as gangland cinema goes, this one's better than the similarly themed New Jack City, but viewers are still better off staying in and checking out Brian De Palma's Scarface or Abel Ferrara's King of New York -- true classics of the genre.