Never Die Alone: Critic Reviews

Working from a 1974 novel by Donald Goines, the director, Ernest Dickerson, proves he's the rare filmmaker who can show the attraction -- and degradation -- of the criminal life without exploiting it.

DMX is the perfect actor for this stylized and often satisfying film adaptation of Donald Goines's novel.

DMX isn't up to the acting needed to play an epic anti-hero, but then director/ex-cinematographer Ernest Dickerson never makes Never very epic on any level.

A bumbling adaptation.

What makes Never Die Alone so monumentally terrible isn't just its bearhugging of gangsta flick convention, but its desperate attempt to imbue run-of-the-mill crime with noir classicism.

A flashy but ultimately routine saga of gangsta criminality and payback.

There's something refreshing about a pulp drama that turns on the notion that redemption is a sucker's fantasy.

Never Die Alone is the first of Goines' ultragritty novels has made it to the big screen. If this is the best his words can inspire, it should also be the last.

A nasty piece of work that doesn't seem to have met a cliche it didn't like.

It's hard to imagine a more disturbingly woman-hating movie than Never Die Alone.

Never Die Alone is [Dickerson's] best work to date, with the complexity of serious fiction and the nerve to start dark and stay dark, to follow the logic of its story right down to its inevitable end.

Purports to be literate film noir but comes off more like the overwritten project of a film school kid who just memorized his textbook on the style.

A hackneyed tale of vengeance set in the 'hood, teeming with stock characters, slo-mo gunplay, and rampant misogyny.

Arquette does what he can with his pitiful character. But the longer Paul drifts, the longer we find it hard to believe that he's still alive. In fact, we're kind of sorry he's still alive. The movie would be much better without him.

Never Die Alone is soft and squishy, lacking tension and suspense, not to mention logic.

This gritty genre piece about four men whose paths intertwine largely overcomes key cast weaknesses to deliver a jazzy, darkly textured rendering of the ghetto pulp of late African-American ex-con author Donald Goines.

A violent, would-be film noir that strains with limited success for tragic resonance and gritty authenticity.

Has a story so silly, so pretentious, that only a narcissistic rapper with a hardcore thug pose would have the chutzpah to star in and narrate such garbage.

The various stories are strong enough to compensate for any acting deficiencies.

The only good thing about Never Die Alone is its rap-retro soundtrack.

Routinely but unconvincingly directed by Dickerson, the movie possesses not a single character with the brains to get through a day without creating a huge mess.

If you cut the expletives from Never Die Alone, it's unlikely that this updated blaxploitation flick would run more than 15 minutes.

Violent movie starring rapper DMX is not for kids.