American Gangster (02 November 2007)
directed by Ridley Scott
starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Lymari Nadal, Ted Levine, RZA, Yul Vazquez, Malcom Goodwin, Ruby Dee, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Carlo Gugino, Skyler Fortgang, John Ortiz, Cuba Gooding Jr., Armande Assante, Kathleen Garrett, Joe Morton, Ritchie Coster, Idris Elba, Common, Warner Miller, Albert Jones, J. Kyle Manzay, T.I., Melissia Hill, Kevin Corrigan, Robert Funaro, Jon Polito, Robert C. Kirk
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MPAA rating: Studio: Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, Relativity Media, Scott Free Productions Script: Steven Zaillian, Mark Jacobson Music: Marc Streitenfeld Running time: 157 minutes Tags: Bangkock; based on true story; boxing; corruption; Crime; dogs; Drama; drugs; heroin; lawyers; money; murder; police investigations; prisons; Thailand; Thriller; trials; Viet Nam Tactical strength: [6/10]
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for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality
American Gangster takes several common movie archetypes and melds them into an interesting movie with a lot less gore than the trailers would have led you to believe. Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) achieves a rags-to-riches success story by creating his own business and successfully promoting his product. The only flaw -- he sells heroin. At the hands of his mentor, Frank learned that successful business comes from cutting out the middle man and buying directly from the source. Frank takes this to the extreme and flies to Bangkok and buys 100 kilograms of pure heroin directly from the grower. Through some judicious bribes, Frank uses the military transport planes traveling from Viet Nam to the United States to smuggle his drugs into the country. With pure heroin to start with, Frank can afford to sell drugs at twice the potency and half the price of the other drug suppliers. His success quickly leads to bringing his entire family up from South Carolina to help run an operation modeled after the Italian gangsters.
Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), a New Jersey police detective, represents another rags-to-riches success story. Unfortunately for Frank, if Richie succeeds, Frank's story will end in tragedy. We first meet Richie tailing the bookie of a known drug dealer. He and his partner breake into the bookie's car and find a million dollars in cash. The police force has so much corruption, that even though Richie turns in the money, everyone assumes that he and his partner must have held back some of the cash for themselves. His fellow officers ostracize Richie. Recognizing Richie's honesty, his captain puts him in charge of a narcotics investigation team backed by Washington, D.C., aimed at getting the biggest drug dealers. Months of careful investigation lead Richie to suspect Lewis. Unfortunately, the lure of cash and drugs corrupts many within Lewis's family, and Richie uses these incidents to narrow in on Lewis and discovering the source of his drugs.
American Gangster often moves at a slow page, but watching the slow progress of the two main characters into successful men in their own field keeps your attention. Other archetypes also start working in conjunction with the rags-to-riches story. We long for the fall of the greedy gangster. We cheer for the justification of the honest, hard-working cop after years of investigations. Directory Ridley Scott knows how to manipulate archetypes. He has manipulated audiences well since Alien, and continues to work with themes that resonate with the core of human nature. Pitting these two men's success against each other, only one can come to a successful end.
From the trailers, I expected to see scene after scene of gore and violence, but I was pleasantly surprised at the intellectual comparison of these "real life" characters from our recent past.
