In Too Deep

In Too Deep follows Jeffrey Cole, a Cincinnati detective assigned to bring down Dwayne Gittens, a drug kingpin known on the streets as God. Gittens controls most of the city's drug trade, and his organization has resisted every previous attempt at infiltration, so Cole goes undercover as a dealer named J. Reid. He succeeds in getting close to Gittens and gaining his trust, but the deeper he goes, the harder it becomes to hold on to his own identity. The film, directed by Michael Rymer in his first feature, is based on a story drawn from real police work and also stars Nia Long, Stanley Tucci, Hill Harper and Jake Weber alongside Omar Epps and LL Cool J.

Released in 1999, In Too Deep is a crime thriller built around the tension between Cole's police work and his growing comfort in the criminal world. It occupies the first slot in Rymer's filmography, before Perfume and Queen of the Damned. Made for around 7 million dollars, it took in roughly 14 million worldwide, a modest return that kept it in circulation as a mid-budget genre picture rather than a breakout hit.

Audience response has been middling: on IMDb it holds a 6.2 rating from about 7,600 votes, and on TMDB a 6.4 from a much smaller pool of voters. A critics' score of 5.2 out of 10 from 57 reviews places it below both audience figures, suggesting reviewers were harder on the film than general viewers were.