Sugar Hill

8/28/2022

Sugar Hill is considered the second installment in scripwriter Barry Michael Cooper’s “Harlem Trilogy.” It is also the weakest link, not necessarily a bad thing when the chain also includes New Jack City and Above the Rim (we may, to a certain extent, attribute the varying quality among the three films to being each directed by a a different filmmaker); unfortunately, it isn’t all that good in a vacuum either. Lacking the originality of New Jack, Sugar Hill could be described as The Blackfather (I would also accept Blacklito’s Way), although it reaches much farther back than that; the film is a tragedy in the classic sense of the word – or at least it would be if it didn’t have one scene too many, specifically a tacked-on semi-happy ending (the previous scene, involving a climactic yet