Starring: DMX, David Arquette, Michael Ealy

Cash and karma rule everything around DMX in Never Die Alone, a vile attempt to establish the retired rapper as a martyr by reintroducing the gangsta clichés that should have been forever laid to rest alongside Tupac and Biggie Smalls. Knowing that DMX wants to break from his rap persona in order to further diversify into film, a story like this one, where a weathered drug kingpin reflects on his life from the grave, would obviously appeal to any Machiavellian looking to trade one world for another. But opting to strip Donald Goines' novel of its one precious commodity, a barely palatable dusting of humanity, makes for a ruthless and hateful film, one that guns past mere, oh, misogyny, and doesn't stop until it's reached the pinnacle of antihumanism. Further outfitted with sub-average filmmaking -- night shots using only available light which suck like it was Dawgme 95; the extensive use of flashback and voiceover narration -- prove that the disservices offered by Alone extend well beyond the cast (and I'm still wondering how Matthew Libatique, who shot Requiem for a Dream among other films, created such ugliness with his camera).

Staying rather faithful to the novel, even lifting stretches of dialogue verbatim, DMX plays King David, a heroin lord who's murdered by a young man from his past upon his return to New York City, where he's come to pay his debts. Reflecting on his life from the grave in a series of circular, faux-spiritual speeches, we listen to David as his corporeal self splits from New York after swindling Harlem drug baron Moon (Clifton Powell) out of some heroin and smacking up a couple ladies, including (and this part's really super-important) his #1 girl, Edna (Keesha Sharp). Ensconced in L.A., he turns Baywatch wannabe Janet (Jennifer Sky) into a heroin junkie (though for weeks she thinks she's snorting coke) and his main distributor. Janet's television connections benefit David's fledgling enterprise, and soon he's got most of her show's cast and crew hooked on horse. David's goal is to squirrel away a quarter million dollars before returning to New York to square-up with Moon and re-establish himself as an East Coast player. His exit is expedited, we learn, by his tumultuous relationship with a new woman, the light-skinned beauty Brenda (Rhoda Jordan), who will passionately shoot his drugs but never, ever, call him her lover.

David exacts his revenge on Brenda with the same heartless tactic he used on Edna years earlier. After arriving back east, he ducks into his old haunt, dispatches the sassy lesbian bartender to call up Moon, buys a drink for a bookish-looking white boy (this is really really super-important), and heads to his Caddy to wait for Moon's goons. It's here where the end returns to the beginning and we discover the connection between David and his killer, Mike (Michael Ealy). It's also the set-up for the entire film's so-called inventive narrative style, as David, bleeding to death from Mike's blade, calls out to Paul, the aforementioned Caucasian, for help, as he adheres to the street credo that one should never die ... you get the picture. For his part, Paul inherits David's car and his audio diary (a collection of tapes stashed in a Bible). One problem with Paul is that, just like in the novel, he's nothing but a plot convention; another is that he's played by David Arquette, who's as fit for drama as DMX is for Nashville.

Then there's King David, who is scripted in a way that requires DMX to shield his own innate charm from his character. Conversely, David's utter hatred of humankind breaks the limits of DMX's acting ability, resulting in easily the worst performance of his career -- this from a man who stated he was leaving rap behind to focus more on church and his family. Working hard, Michael Ealy manages to add some animatronics to his wax museum thug, but a note to the wardrobe and make up artists: the secret connection between Mike and David would have been slightly more convincing if the two men didn't look like peers, despite the hint of grey in David's temples.

Donald Goines, like Tupac and Biggie, found his greatest success in death. He wrote two novels in prison and pumped out over a dozen more as an ex-con/daily heroin user. People have said, "he wrote fiction the way other people package meat," but his characters strive for redemption as the author himself offers the faintest notion of hope. In the end of the novel, Paul, though still very much a lost soul and outsider, hands over the money David hid in the trunk of his car to a drug addiction clinic. Director Ernest Dickerson and screenwriter James Gibson refuse to let the slightest sense of decency surface, resulting in one of the more malevolent genre films in years.