AMERICAN GANGSTER

Director: Ridley Scott (Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator)
Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe

Ridley Scott has a habit of overselling his films. I remember when he made Kingdom of Heaven he was plainly derisive about all of the other 'history' films made after his Gladiator was a hit. I recall at least one quote where he claimed how he knew how to make those movies work and everyone else didn't. Of course Kingdom of Heaven was a decent movie, but hardly anything special. Similarly I've seen a number of quotes calling American Gangster 'Serpico mixed with the Godfather'. Believe me, this is little more than standard Hollywood marketing. American Gangster has nothing to do with the Godfather. It's yet another fine Ridley Scott film, enjoyable, entertainingly, and of good quality. What it's not is a masterpiece that will be long remembered.

The film follows two connected stories, first the rise and demise of Frank Lucas (Washington) the real-life Harlem heroin king of the 1970s, and the cop (Crowe) who brought him down. The two stories are certainly connected, but the two actors only spend 10 minutes or so at the end simultaneously on screen. I'll admit I liked this structure a lot, where half the time we see the criminal's point of view, and half the time the cop.

For the longest time the cops don't have a clue that Frank Lucas even exists. They only know that the heroin market has suddenly become awash in a cheap, high-quality product called blue magic. In one of the best little tidbits of the film (which is quite true I've heard), the cops first get Lucas on their radar at the famous 1971 Frazier-Ali fight. Crowe and his squad see a black man in an outrageous chinchilla coat and white hat sitting *in front* of the well-known mobsters of the day. That clues them in that this might just be someone worth checking out. That's just awesome in every way, I think.

Once they've got Lucas in their sights, it becomes a matter of pinning the drugs to him, which they eventually do when they find out an even better little tidbit (also quite true). It seems that Lucas was importing his heroin from southeast Asia inside the coffins of dead American servicemen from the Vietnam war. Like they say, amazing, but true.

So the story of Frank Lucas is really quite interesting throughout, but that aside, what is this movie about? Quite surprisingly, it's about economics I think. Economics and the American dream. Frank Lucas lived his version of the American dream by embracing the tenets of capitalism. He put a better product on the market and made millions. Here's the problem I have with the film, though. Yes, in the end he was captured and lost his money and even went to prison (for a while), but the film still manages to show this man in an extremely positive light. The movie doesn't seem to quite have its moral compass in order, I think. There is one(1), very brief scene showing the effects all that cheap heroin had on society. Believe me that scene doesn't counteract all of the positive vibes we get about Lucas in the rest of the movie. In the Godfather, Michael Corleone eventually loses his soul. In American Gangster, Frank Lucas loses his cash, but remains a hero.

Standouts: Pretty good screenplay, fine (although not great) acting by Washington and Crowe.
Blowouts: Yet another of the seemingly hundreds of films of the last few years that's a little too in love with human flaws. This movie simply doesn't find Frank Lucas to be a bad guy.

Grade: B+