Snipes’ concerns are not without merit, as evidenced when the co-star of Brooklyn’s Finest strolls into the Mansion hotel in the ritzy Buckhead section of Atlanta, surveying the scene, his large expressive eyes peeking through his designer glasses and his even bigger personality enveloping the room. Snipes is draped in black — black slacks, black mock turtleneck, black sunglasses, black socks, and black shoes — which immediately projects you back to that pivotal scene in New Jack City when Nino Brown enters the room with sinister intent, releases that dinosaur-sized Rottweiler, and proceeds to punk out G-Money with the deadly sword. Yes, you remember the sword.
In the Antoine Fuqua-directed Brooklyn’s Finest, Snipes newest incarnation of a crime syndicate boss, the recently released felon Caz, kind of lets you see what might have happened to the legendary Nino Brown had he been imprisoned instead of being executed at the end of the film.
“The character was a street don who got sent away and he comes back rehabilitated — spiritually rehabilitated — looking to improve on his life’s condition, recognizing the flaws in his theories and his earlier beliefs, right? And then he sees the game deteriorating, recognizing that he doesn’t want to get back into this. [The game] wasn’t even like it was before. And it’s not even what it was before. I wanted to make sure that we have a sense of his awareness of that, and remember a lot of cats are in that situation, trying to get out [of] their environments [and] the surroundings — it was like Al Pacino in Godfather III: ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,’ ” Snipes says.
“That’s why I like working with this brother. I appreciate his work and his manhood, because he’s layered. He’s not just looking at the surface of things. [You] can’t come in and say I’m going to do Nino Brown in a different hat and an argyle,” Snipes says of Fuqua, the director who provided a similar philosophical foundation in Training Day that enabled Denzel Washington to snag his second Academy Award. “You got to have something much deeper,” Snipes adds. [Fuqua] is very complex and eclectic in his interests.”
Snipes’ career has been similarly characterized as complex and eclectic. In fact, few African American actors in Hollywood history have been able to delve into so many characters. Maybe Denzel, Samuel L. and Will Smith — and that’s about it. Snipes, who turns 48 in July, has proven to be adept at channeling his inner gangster in roles like New Jack City and Brooklyn’s Finest. But then Snipes completely reverses the field, like a punt returner looking for daylight, and breaks into the open with upstanding character roles that show his immense range like Passenger 57, Boiling Point and U.S. Marshalls. He cuts back and plays a romantic role in One Night Stand. He’s done the upstanding cop (Rising Sun opposite Sean Connery); he’s played the businessman (Jungle Fever); a wisecracking musician (Mo Betta Blues); a vampire (Blade franchise); comedic roles (White Men Can’t Jump, Money Train); and even a drag queen opposite the late Patrick Swayze in To Wong Fu Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.
Snipes’ confidence, charisma and subtle cockiness on-screen enabled him to not only ascend to the top of the Hollywood hierarchy; his name is permanently emblazoned on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
“It’s a blessing and very unexpected. I never thought I was going to be a leading man, cause there weren’t very many brothers — especially chocolate ones [he rubs his face for added effect] — doing this,” Snipes says.
Snipes was so convinced of this, in fact, that when Warner Bros. sent him the script for Passenger 57, shortly after New Jack City turned him into an urban icon, he didn’t believe he had been picked for the role of the good cop. “As a matter of fact, I only read the bad guy lines. And I remember asking, ‘How many lines does the bad guy have?’ And they said ‘No, no, no. We want you to play the lead. And I said ‘the lead?’ And they said ‘yeah.’ And I was like, ‘Great! I’m in.’ … Everything that I’ve done has been versatile. And having that theater background is what has kept me in the game for so long. Because I can do that, or I can do that, or I can do that,” he says.
Snipes credits his theater background (he also boasts a bachelor’s degree) for providing him with the versatility to handle different characters, while his martial arts training established a confidence and regimen to help him bend his mind around complex theatrical scenarios.
“[Martial arts] makes you very disciplined, it makes you very focused. That and being taught by some really great teachers [like] John Henrik Clarke and Dr. Van Sertima and Dr. Ben Jachanan,” he says of the legendary Pan-African scholars and prolific authors. “These brothers were articulate. They were about the information and how they presented it. And they wanted to have it backed up two, three and four times. That’s my foundation.”
But the one role he cannot escape is Nino Brown. Each time, he has played an unsavory character similar to Nino; it has led to internal warfare.
“I have to admit that I’ve had some really heavy inner conversation[s] about playing these roles and have some concerns about it, about what image I am projecting. Am I perpetuating stereotypes, all of that,” he says. “But thank God that I’ve been in the business long enough to where my repertoire helps balance that out — the good guys and the bad guys.”
Only directors like the cerebral Fuqua, who blew away the horde of theatergoers with his deeply spiritual and philosophical take on life and filmmaking in a special pre-screening in Atlanta, could get Snipes to do that again.
“That’s what I like about this cat,” Snipes says of Fuqua. “And so as an actor, not only is it a pleasure to be around a cat like that, he’s thinking on multiple levels, he’s multidimensional. But he’s someone who also applies it technically in the medium that we’re in, which is so much fantasy where people who look for that quick fix, get out and get that paper and floss. He’s layered. And for me as an actor, that is cool, because now, OK, you say ‘if I’m going to work with a cat like that, your performance and your work has to be layered, too.’ ”
The one redeemable aspect of Snipes playing ‘hood honchos, is that all of his gangsta characters met similar fates.
“Every drug dealer I’ve played has died. So that’s cool. That’s perhaps my way to deal with the kind of glorifications of those types of characters. Especially Nino Brown,” he says. Snipes then put to rest any and all quests for him to reprise the ruthless but suave character. “That’s why I never did another one. They tried to do [New Jack City] 2 and 3 and 4 I don’t want the young generation to say ‘that’s what I want to grow up and be like.’ ”
Playing Caz in Brooklyn’s Finest, a former drug lord who re-enters the concrete jungle, Snipes was able to show a man who is no longer in control of the circumstances around him. He is frightened, with one eye on his so-called boys and the other eye on a quick escape out of the game.
“And also, you don’t know who to trust. You want to trust! You want to believe! You know that the cats who are closest to you are the ones that [are] going to do you. That’s real, that’s real. That’s a real thing within our culture. And if [there’s] anything that I can contribute that has a message to it, [it’s] for us brothers to take a real close look at that. Some of our greatest have been taken out by the ones closest to us,” he says, “Over the years, I’ve had some greaaaaat friends — up until the time that we got into the business. I got to working and my pockets got fatter. And all of a sudden those friendships changed.
“It’s jealousy,” says Fuqua.
“Straight up, straight up,” answers Snipes.
His friends would have a lot to be jealous about. Ascending to heights few have ever scaled will do that. But Snipes freely shares that it was the King of Pop who helped him take his game to levels he never thought he could when Snipes was a fledgling but promising star. Now, keep in mind that acting was not Michael Jackson’s genius. But …
“He set the bar for me as an actor. When we were rehearsing, Michael Jackson came in to the rehearsals as though it was a performance. Maybe to him it was modulating. But to us? Whoa! I was like ‘should I buy a ticket?!’ He was like that from the jump. And I said ‘I got it. That’s what makes him like that,’ ” he says, saying the man still lives. “If you can start there and you still have more in the reserves, then you are out of here. So you come out, so that, even in rehearsals, you execute what you imagine, the vision and imagining yourself doing it the way you want to do it. And if I come close, then great, I still have room to grow. And ever since then that’s how I approach work. Like I only got one shot! Like [there’s] no other opportunity or rehearsal. Just one shot. Go for it. That’s pretty much it. Bring all your skills and then … boom!
That’s pretty much what happened to Snipes’ career.
