Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Wesley Snipes | ... | Flipper Purify | |
Annabella Sciorra | ... | Angie Tucci | |
Spike Lee | ... | Cyrus | |
Ossie Davis | ... | The Good Reverend Doctor Purify | |
Ruby Dee | ... | Lucinda Purify | |
Samuel L. Jackson | ... | Gator Purify | |
Lonette McKee | ... | Drew | |
John Turturro | ... | Paulie Carbone | |
Frank Vincent | ... | Mike Tucci | |
Anthony Quinn | ... | Lou Carbone | |
Halle Berry | ... | Vivian | |
Tyra Ferrell | ... | Orin Goode | |
Veronica Webb | ... | Vera | |
![]() |
Veronica Timbers | ... | Ming |
![]() |
David Dundara | ... | Charlie Tucci |
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse. Written by Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>
I saw Jungle Fever for the first time years ago, when it first came out on video. By the movie's end, I was lost. Part of it may have been maturity - I was in junior high - and part of it was that the movie I was sold was not the movie I got. Part of this selling is Stevie Wonder's title song, which frequently finds its way into my tapedeck. And the kind of color-blind love Wonder sings about is not the relationship in this movie. Something I feel now as I felt then was that the film does not let us get close to these people, let us see them in love. Only now do I realize that this is because the film is not about two people in love. When I first saw it, I thought the film was advocating segregation from the "other side." Now I realize that it just showing the complexity of issues which come to play when a black person and white person from separatist neighborhoods come together, and mostly how those environments are changed. There are things to overcome, but this relationship will not overcome them. I am still puzzled by the rather large subplot involving Samuel L. Jackson as Wesley Snipes's crackhead brother and by the final shot where Wesley Snipes clutches a crack-whore to himself and screams "NO!" while the camera rushes from halfway across Harlem to end in a close-up on him. It's indelible - most of what has stuck with me about this movie over time involves this subplot and that shot - but I am still puzzled by its intention in the overall scheme of what the film is trying to say. Something about the endless problems facing black people?