American Gangster
In the early seventies, a drug dealer in Harlem named Frank Lucas used a basic business principle--sell a better product at a lower price--to become a powerful force in organized crime. He may not have been as big as U.S. Steel, but he ruled the roost in New York City, occupying a spot even higher than the Mafia. American Gangster is his story, as well as his counterpart, Richie Roberts, the police detective who brought him down.
Both are fascinating figures and expertly acted by Denzel Washing and Russell Crowe, respectively. Lucas was from North Carolina, and served as a driver and bodyguard for Harlem kingpin Bumpy Johnson. When Johnson dies (while in a discount store bemoaning the lack of respect for the middle man) Lucas assumes control of his empire and expands, by getting the bright idea of traveling directly to Southeast Asia to buy pure heroin and have it shipped back to the U.S. in an ingenious method. He comes fabulously wealthy, and brings his entire family up from North Carolina to work for him. He believes in family, honesty and integrity, even though he has no trouble murdering his rivals.
Roberts, meanwhile, has all sorts of problems. He is a custody battle with his ex-wife over his son. He is honest to a fault--when he turns in nearly a million dollars in cash that he finds during a bust he becomes a pariah on a force that is full of guys on the take. It's only when the federal government recognizes his honesty and puts him in charge of task force to bring down the drug trade that he really get to flex his muscles. When he sees Lucas at the Ali-Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden, R0berts realizes who his true target is.
If that description reminds one of several other films, well, it did me too, and I was shifting in my seat and checking my wristwatch a lot during the first half of the film. The parallel story of cop and crook, with the cop's life a mess and the crook a kind of genius, suggests Michael Mann's Heat. American Gangster also references either directly or indirectly The French Connection, Serpico, Across 110th Street, Superfly, and of course, the be-all and end-all film about organized crime as the American dream, The Godfather. The first half of American Gangster was giving me an "I've seen this all before" feeling.
But in the second half I quit looking at my watch. When the pieces fall together for Roberts' team the film became a taut thriller. There's a terrific sequence where director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steve Zaillian bounce back and forth between Roberts' team searching a U.S. Army plane for contraband, while a corrupt New York cop, menacing played by Josh Brolin, trashes Lucas' opulent mansion. Lucas is off-screen, in Thailand to meet with his supplier, and his entire world is going down the drain while he's across the Pacific.
Though this film is in many ways a throwback to the glory days of the seventies in American film-making, it has the gleam of today. Cinematographer Harris Savides gives the film a glossy polish, not the gritty look of many seventies crime pictures. Even Newark, New Jersey, in all its squalor, manages to look picturesque. The lighting of the set where the heroin is cut by naked women give the place a kind of fantasy-land look, and I guess in many ways that whole world was a kind of fantasy. The costumes, sets and cars all look right, and there's some well-timed inclusion of real-life events in the form of TV news clips.
The two leads are fantastic. Washington plays Lucas as a ruthless businessman (the first time we see him he lights a man on fire and then shoots him). He's always under control, always thinking. He gives the role a necessary weight about which the rest of the film can orbit. It is to Scott and Zaillian's credit, though, that they do not glamourize him for one instant. Several times during the film, like a motif in music, are included brief scenes of the users of his drug shooting up, ruining their lives and those around them (I won't quickly forget a scene of a woman either passed out or dead, her crying baby sitting beside her). No amount of free Thanksgiving turkeys that Lucas passes out can make up for that kind of carnage.
Russell Crowe is not to be outdone, though. He nails his character, a man at loose ends but with a stubborn streak of integrity. He has a great scene where his childhood friend, now a wise guy in the mob, attempts to buy him off, and Roberts sticks to his principles. For all of Roberts' faults, he really does come out of the film a hero.
In addition to Brolin, there are fine supporting performances by Cuba Gooding Jr., Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a touching turn by Ruby Dee as Lucas' mother, who finally comes to realize just how her son earned all that money. American Gangster is a fine entertainment.
Both are fascinating figures and expertly acted by Denzel Washing and Russell Crowe, respectively. Lucas was from North Carolina, and served as a driver and bodyguard for Harlem kingpin Bumpy Johnson. When Johnson dies (while in a discount store bemoaning the lack of respect for the middle man) Lucas assumes control of his empire and expands, by getting the bright idea of traveling directly to Southeast Asia to buy pure heroin and have it shipped back to the U.S. in an ingenious method. He comes fabulously wealthy, and brings his entire family up from North Carolina to work for him. He believes in family, honesty and integrity, even though he has no trouble murdering his rivals.
Roberts, meanwhile, has all sorts of problems. He is a custody battle with his ex-wife over his son. He is honest to a fault--when he turns in nearly a million dollars in cash that he finds during a bust he becomes a pariah on a force that is full of guys on the take. It's only when the federal government recognizes his honesty and puts him in charge of task force to bring down the drug trade that he really get to flex his muscles. When he sees Lucas at the Ali-Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden, R0berts realizes who his true target is.
If that description reminds one of several other films, well, it did me too, and I was shifting in my seat and checking my wristwatch a lot during the first half of the film. The parallel story of cop and crook, with the cop's life a mess and the crook a kind of genius, suggests Michael Mann's Heat. American Gangster also references either directly or indirectly The French Connection, Serpico, Across 110th Street, Superfly, and of course, the be-all and end-all film about organized crime as the American dream, The Godfather. The first half of American Gangster was giving me an "I've seen this all before" feeling.
But in the second half I quit looking at my watch. When the pieces fall together for Roberts' team the film became a taut thriller. There's a terrific sequence where director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steve Zaillian bounce back and forth between Roberts' team searching a U.S. Army plane for contraband, while a corrupt New York cop, menacing played by Josh Brolin, trashes Lucas' opulent mansion. Lucas is off-screen, in Thailand to meet with his supplier, and his entire world is going down the drain while he's across the Pacific.
Though this film is in many ways a throwback to the glory days of the seventies in American film-making, it has the gleam of today. Cinematographer Harris Savides gives the film a glossy polish, not the gritty look of many seventies crime pictures. Even Newark, New Jersey, in all its squalor, manages to look picturesque. The lighting of the set where the heroin is cut by naked women give the place a kind of fantasy-land look, and I guess in many ways that whole world was a kind of fantasy. The costumes, sets and cars all look right, and there's some well-timed inclusion of real-life events in the form of TV news clips.
The two leads are fantastic. Washington plays Lucas as a ruthless businessman (the first time we see him he lights a man on fire and then shoots him). He's always under control, always thinking. He gives the role a necessary weight about which the rest of the film can orbit. It is to Scott and Zaillian's credit, though, that they do not glamourize him for one instant. Several times during the film, like a motif in music, are included brief scenes of the users of his drug shooting up, ruining their lives and those around them (I won't quickly forget a scene of a woman either passed out or dead, her crying baby sitting beside her). No amount of free Thanksgiving turkeys that Lucas passes out can make up for that kind of carnage.
Russell Crowe is not to be outdone, though. He nails his character, a man at loose ends but with a stubborn streak of integrity. He has a great scene where his childhood friend, now a wise guy in the mob, attempts to buy him off, and Roberts sticks to his principles. For all of Roberts' faults, he really does come out of the film a hero.
In addition to Brolin, there are fine supporting performances by Cuba Gooding Jr., Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a touching turn by Ruby Dee as Lucas' mother, who finally comes to realize just how her son earned all that money. American Gangster is a fine entertainment.
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