Harlem Nights is a 1989 American crime comedy-drama film starring, written, and directed by Eddie Murphy.
The film tells the story of "Sugar" Ray and Vernest "Quick" Brown as a team running a nightclub in the late 1930s in Harlem while contending with gangsters and corrupt police officials.
He had always wanted to direct and star in a period piece, as well as work with Pryor, whom he considered his greatest influence in stand-up comedy.
Determined to eliminate his competition, he sends corrupt and racist police sergeant Phil Cantone to demand the majority of the club's earnings each week.
Knowing the club cannot survive, Ray insists on relocating to another city but Quick is eager to fight back.
Instead, Ray suggests a plan that will earn their friends $50,000 each before they relocate:[a] on the night of a highly anticipated boxing match between their friend, World Heavyweight Champion Jack Jenkins, and Michael Kirkpatrick, Ray's team will rob the mainly-Calhoune owned betting houses of at least $750,000 in cash.
[b] Ray and his associates bet on Kirkpatrick to win, tricking Calhoune into believing they have convinced Jenkins to lose the fight and guarantee their success.
Ray sends Quick into hiding while Calhoune retaliates by having Cantone raid the club and eventually having it burned down.
Calhoune realizes he has been tricked, as Jenkins easily defeats Kirkpatrick, and returns home in a rage after learning that the Pitty-Pat was destroyed.
Richie unwittingly delivers Sunshine's bag to Calhoune, who realizes Ray is behind the scheme because it contains parcels of sugar.
On the outskirts of Harlem, Ray and Quick pay the white officers for their role in the plan and split up Calhoune's money.
Believing there is nowhere like Harlem, but knowing they can never safely return, Ray takes a final look at the skyline before departing with Quick and his friends to start over in another city.
The part of Dominique La Rue, played by Jasmine Guy, was originally cast with actress Michael Michele.
[14] In total, Harlem Nights grossed $60.9 million, making it only the 21st-highest-grossing film of 1989 in the United States and Canada.
[15][16] On November 17, 1989, two men were shot in the parking lot outside of the AMC Americana 8 theater in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan.
A 22-year-old woman, who panicked and ran into traffic, was in critical condition two days later at the city's Providence Hospital; her name was withheld by police.
Less than an hour after the shooting, police arrived at the theater to find a 24-year-old Detroit man who had shot at an officer.
When police stopped the projection of Harlem Nights to find suspects, an hour-long riot erupted.
However, Raymond Howard, a lieutenant of the Richmond police department, defended the film, saying, "There's nothing wrong with the show.
The movie also lacks the Harlem outside the gaudy gangland environs, the poverty, filth, pain, humanity, humor and danger that feeds these mobster fantasies.
"[20] Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert panned the film; it was featured on their "Worst of 1989" review show with Siskel stating that it was racist, sexist, and badly directed, and Ebert agreeing with him, also adding that they thought Murphy was directing a film to call himself a director.
[4] About the negative reception, Eddie Murphy said: "There was a validity to a lot of things that people were saying about Harlem Nights but then they went extra mean on it because it was me.
The website's consensus reads: "An all-star comedy lineup is wasted on a paper-thin plot and painfully clunky dialogue.
[22] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 16 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".