Bill Duke’s A Rage in Harlem finds Cincinnati boldly playing a version of New York with moxie to spare...

| Aug 26, 2023

Givens is nothing short of spectacular.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 9, 2023

Whitaker conserves sympathy until the end, but with much visible effort. [Full review in Spanish]

| Dec 30, 2022

Duke keeps this tangled tale of lust and larceny bouncing with a disreputable, funloving B-movie energy that's hard to resist.

| Feb 6, 2018

It bleeds for a kind of Harlem justice, as its intense black characters act tough, nasty, sexy, twisty, heroic and lively.

| Original Score: B | Aug 5, 2013

A Rage in Harlem is the kind of film that, every ten minutes or so, requires violent bloodshed or a sexual rendezvous to prevent audiences from becoming glassy-eyed and slack-jawed.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 1, 2013

With its snazzy Elmer Bernstein score, its snappy period flavor and its all-star cast doing something completely different, A Rage in Harlem should have been much more fun than it is.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 1, 2013

Based on Chester Himes's novel, this is a stylish, fast-moving and often humorous thriller from Deep Cover director Bill Duke.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 1, 2013

Jazzy and jauntily funny.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 1, 2013

Underneath the fancy trappings, however, is a disappointingly ordinary caper movie that moves far too slowly for a picture of this type.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 1, 2013

That extraordinary cast, directed by Bill Duke, has little to do other than idle between sporadic outbursts of sadistic violence.

| Jul 1, 2013

As the movie becomes increasingly violent and unpleasant, the characters chase around after each other in a threadbare gangster plot about a trunk of gold.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 1, 2013

[A] flamboyant, engaging action comedy.

Full Review | Jul 1, 2013

Duke and company have been true to Himes' brash, blaspheming spirit, and that is no small thing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 1, 2013

It's largely a cheap looking, tawdry affair, with tortuous interludes in which the humour devolves on gratuitous unpleasantness or tired old bad jokes at the expense of women.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 1, 2013

Bill Duke directed this mixture of high energy and low vulgarity, which doesn't do justice to the talents of its mostly black cast.

| Jul 1, 2013

Bill Duke's Harlem has the heft of an imaginatively heightened reality; it's a great place to visit.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 1, 2013

A delightful rendering of a Chester Himes novel with a 50s setting.

| Jul 1, 2013

A Rage in Harlem is an uneven combination of comedy and carnage. When it's good, it's very good. When it's not, it's simply bloody.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 1, 2013

There's just enough atmosphere, comedy, and raw acting talent in Bill Duke's amiable gangster-caper movie, A Rage In Harlem, to make you wish the plot weren't a complete shambles.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 7, 2011