Sugar Hill

Sugar Hill is a dark, bloody family tragedy, told in terms so sad and poetic that it transcends its genre and becomes eloquent drama. [25 Feb 1994, p.33]

Cooper's writing can be overwrought at times; a few of his scenes don't come off as he'd evidently hoped. And Ichaso's direction has a tendency to get fussy. Yet overall Sugar Hill is an ably realized drama, well worth seeing for its candid and sympathetic insights into the mindsets of African-American men. [04 Mar 1994, p.L27]

Sugar Hill is arguably the most beautiful-looking crime drama since Coppola's Godfather, Part II. Forsaking the glitz and over-the-top grittiness of New Jack City and other recent NYC gangster films, director Ichaso instead opts for the lush, burnished earth-tones of the Corleone clan. It's a dark, rich film, and its lengthy running time of over two hours glides by with only a few annoying snags. Read full review

Directed with care by Leon Ichaso and written by New Jack's Barry Michael Cooper, snazzy-looking Hill also covers familiar terrain. [25 Feb 1994, p.4D]

On one side, Sugar Hill is an admirable picture with strong performances. On the other, it's a victim of narrative cliches. [25 Mar 1994]

Ambitious attempt to make a "Godfather"-like epic about a black Harlem drug dealer starts well but loses focus. [25 Feb 1994, p.AE15]

The picture has moments of raw emotional power, but these are overshadowed by lapses into needless vulgarity and sadistic violence, especially in a repulsive scene that lingers on the vicious brutalization of a helpless woman. [04 Mar 1994, p.1]

While the story doesn't score points for originality, the themes addressed are important and immediate, and ultimately it's a failure in execution that keeps this film from joining the ranks of a number of recent, memorable pictures chronicling life on the streets and in the ghettos. Read full review

Wading through blood is too much of a price to pay for Sugar Hill’s pluses, and it’s a shame the movie business has made it difficult for them to be experienced any other way. Read full review

The generally strong performances do justice to scriptwriter Barry Michael Cooper's evident desire to avoid the New Jack stereotyping of many contemporary black crime movies; the fluid camera and lush jazz score ensure that it looks and sounds classy; and much of the time the director's understatement and attention to detail are a distinct advantage. However, matters are not helped by an actorly tone, some plot-stopping big speeches, and an often sluggish pace. Read full review

Intended as more than a simple genre flick, SUGAR HILL aspires to something like classical tragedy, but it's weighed down by its sense of self-importance. Read full review

Sugar Hill is often more unflinching in its detailing of the death trip drugs provoke -- a pair of overdoses are particularly harrowing and the gun-violence is sufficiently sudden and shocking -- but much of its message feels as if it's being delivered by Western Union. Read full review

Nothing really connects; it's not fluid and roaring but a collection of set-pieces. [25 Feb 1994]

This ponderous, mostly empty exercise at least has ambition. It wants to be more than the usual gangsta zap. But about the best that can be said for it is that it dresses well. [25 Feb 1994, p.48]

Director Leon Ichaso (A Kiss to Die For) is intent on presenting the Harlem story in near-operatic terms, but ultimately the beautifully rendered, photographically engaging Sugar Hill is crippled by its own self-importance. [25 Feb 1994, p.C1]

Ploddingly written by Barry Michael Cooper, this shrug-evoking movie has been grimly directed by the numbers by Ichaso, who overlays his production with the obligatory sax music and in-your-viscera violence. [25 Feb 1994, p.A]

What Sugar Hill lacks is modulation. The entire movie is played at the same high level of dramatic intensity - tragedy piled on tragedy, confrontation piled on confrontation, grand speech upon grand speech. Impassioned though this approach is, it eventually takes on a cumulative feeling of bombast. [25 Feb 1994, p.38]

Their apartments are chic, the architecture is impressive, the restaurants richly appointed. And yet, while the atmosphere and cinematography of director Leon Ichaso's grandly conceived movie evoke The Godfather series (as does its theme of brother vs. brother in a criminal underworld), Barry Michael Cooper's screenplay falls short of any such epic design. [25 Feb 1994, p.03]

Ichaso demonstrates he's ready for the big leagues: His movie is noble and slick, technically accomplished. But it never touches the heart. [26 Feb 1994, p.G3]

Sugar Hill wants to tear up our insides, but I’m afraid the movie leaves us hooting with disbelief instead. Read full review

Sugar Hill is a movie that manages to be as self-destructive as its two central characters, Harlem drug-runners Roemello and Raynathan Skuggs. Like those two desperate (and disparate) brothers, Leon Ichaso's film ultimately wastes its potential and our time. [26 Feb 1994, p.7B]

Several graphic scenes of torture and vengeance merely add to the movie's primer of inhuman brutality, and Sugar Hill's tragic, almost Shakespearean climax is undermined by a Band-Aid of a "positive" ending that rings patently and offensively false. Read full review

Sugar Hill wants to be very different to the other Boyz in the Hood style films by using a second rate Spike Lee approach but sadly it doesn't make the film any better, only highlighting its failures. With the market heavily saturated with these 'hood' gangster films, this fails to stand out. Read full review

Mr. Ichaso's slow, deliberate direction of Barry Michael Cooper's windy screenplay is painfully slack. If this film doesn't resort to much vicious gunplay until its later sections, that may be because the characters are always in danger of talking one another to death. Read full review

A self-indulgent drama about a Harlem drug kingpin trying to go straight, Sugar Hill plays like a dreary variation on New Jack City. Read full review

Just as there can be fresh angles on the old story, there is a growing number of urban-survival cliches that lose their dramatic impact as they grow tiresomely familiar. Sugar Hill is a virtual catalog of these cliches - a serious, well-meaning film that offers no new insight into the crises it professes to understand. [25 Feb 1994, p.D21]