Francine sees the good in Bumpy, and encourages him to make something of himself, but Bumpy defends his career choice: "The numbers provide jobs for over 2,000 colored folks right here in Harlem alone. It's the only home-grown business we got.'' The game is run by Stephanie St. Clair (Cicely Tyson), known as the Queen of Numbers. She's from the islands, elegant, competitive. She takes on Bumpy as her lieutenant. The mob has up until now let Harlem run its own rackets, but Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth) moves in, trying to take over the numbers. His nominal boss is the powerful Lucky Luciano (Andy Garcia), who disapproves of Schultz because of the way he dresses ("You got mustard on your suit''), and is inclined to stand back and see what happens. He doesn't mind if Schultz takes over Harlem, but is prepared to do business with the Queen and Bumpy if that's the way things work out.
One thing that has kept the Mafia from attaining more power in the United States is that it has a tendency to murder its most ambitious members; the guys who keep a low profile may survive, but are not leadership material. Imagine a modern corporation run along the same lines. Bumpy is the far-sighted strategist who sees that it's better to talk than fight; Dutch is the thug who itches to start shooting.
This is Bill Duke's second period film set in Harlem, after "A Rage in Harlem" (1991). He likes the clothes, the cars, the intrigue. (In both films, interestingly, he didn't film in Harlem, finding better period locations in Cincinnati for "Rage'' and Chicago for "Hoodlum.'') He builds up to some effective set-pieces, including a massacre that interrupts a trip to the opera; in the payoff, Bumpy and the Queen listen to an aria while he has blood on his shirt.
The film's argument is that the policy racket, like many legitimate home-grown black businesses, was appropriated by whites when it became too powerful. The streets of inner-city America are lined with shuttered storefronts while their former customers line up at Wal-Mart. And, yes, there is an element of racism involved: When I was growing up in Champaign-Urbana in the 1940s and 1950s, the richest black man in town was said to be the local numbers czar. Whites had no problem with the numbers (some played), but they couldn't stop talking about how a black man could make all that money.
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