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Russell Stevens (Laurence Fishburne), a Cincinnati police officer, is recruited by the DEA to go undercover as "John Hull" and infiltrate the West Coast's largest cocaine supply chain. As Stevens climbs the ladder and partners with a coke-dealing lawyer played by Jeff Goldblum, the line between the cop and the character he's playing starts to disappear. Directed by Bill Duke from a screenplay by Michael Tolkin and Henry Bean, Deep Cover filters the war on drugs through the lens of classic noir, with Dr. Dre and a debuting Snoop Dogg supplying the film's title track. It's a film about a man forced to keep playing a role that was never safe to play in the first place.
Michael B. Gillespie is the author of Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film, which examines Deep Cover as a defining case study. His writing has appeared in Film Comment, Film Quarterly, and The Criterion Collection. He served as consulting producer on the Criterion release of Deep Cover, where he also wrote the accompanying essay.
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