American Gangster [Blu-ray]
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Movie Reviews of American Gangster [Blu-ray]
Movie Review: "This is my home. My country. Frank Lucas don't run from nobody. This is America."
Summary: 5 Stars
Back in the late 60s, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) was a driver for one of New York's leading crime figures. But after said person has a fatal heart attack that claims his life, Frank ponders where to go from there. That comes in the form of heroin, which he brings into the country inside coffins containing wounded soldiers who died in the Vietnam war. The heroin is pure, uncut stuff, which he calls "Blue Magic". With the help of his hoodlum bretheren (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Common, Warner Miller, Albert Jones, J. Kyle Manzay), he makes a profit off of it, and eventually marrying Miss Puerto Rico (Lymari Nadal) in the process.
Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), an honest police detective, is not very popular with his crooked partners and is going through a divorce battle with his ex-wife Laurie (Carla Gugino). Now working with a cleaner team of drug enforcers, he can now take down Lucas' empire without much problems.
"American Gangster", along with "Lions for Lambs", is one of the many much anticipated films this fall looking to get cozy with the Golden Globe and Oscar crowd. One stars award winners Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, and the other one has Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise. My pick? "Gangster", all the way.
Of course, this isn't no ordinary crime drama that you've seen. All that's on the screen has been based on a true story (as instigated as the film kicks off) about real-life crime figure Frank Lucas. In 157 minutes of running time, "American Gangster" is told like a "Scarface"-esque rags-to-riches story about a nobody who became a somebody from selling drugs. With that, he gets the money, power, and respect. But like "Scarface", the kingpin eventually doesn't maintain power forever. It's standard stuff, but director Ridley Scott manages to make some solid, riveting stuff out of it, thanks to a large cast of today's most popular African and Caucasian actors.
Washington is in true form, but is anyone shocked? As Frank Lucas, the actor sells the stuff, whether it's waxing poetic about business, sharing time with his family (which also includes a welcome performance from Ruby Dee as Lucas' mother), confronting his rivals (Cuba Gooding Jr. leaves a huge chunk of a mark on the film as the flashy and flamboyant Nicky Barnes), or confronting Richie Roberts for the first time (it's shades of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro's confrontation in Heat). It's standard stuff, but Washington is capable of finding ways to keep its shelf life dust-free.
Russell Crowe makes an excellent adversary to Washington. Also doing another performance as a cop (he did L.A. Confidential, remember?), Crowe is able to juggle Richie Roberts' squeaky clean performance on the job to his flawed family life where he's about to lose his wife and kid to Las Vegas.
Before I get into the rest of the cast, I'll need to do a little ribbing on Roger Bart. A usually fierce actor, he suffers from the Keira Knightley school of overcompensating and crap method acting. As a creepy attorney, he turns all indication lights and spews a racist tirade at Richie Roberts. The man can be usually reliable ("The Producers Musical" - he's better suited in movies like that), but here, it's way out of place for a movie that requires relaxed acting (especially from Carla Gugino, whom Bart could've studied, cause she could've gone over the top too, but didn't). Regardless, it's only a small cameo. Moving on...
Ridley Scott also assembled a star-studded cast to back up both Washington and Crowe: we've got Josh Brolin as a crooked cop (unlike Bart, Brolin doesn't need to overcompensate when playing a crooked figure), direct-to-video action star Armand Assante as a Mafia godfather, Idris Elba as one of Lucas' rivals, T.I. as a nephew who becomes enamored with his uncle's lifestyle (following in the footsteps, Ice Cube and LL Cool J, Mr. Clifford Harris is evolving into one of the more talented rapper-turned-actors; "ATL" definitely was no fluke), Anthony Hamilton in a cameo as a lounge singer, Wu-Tang head honcho RZA as one of Richie Roberts' new DEA co-workers, and some additional support from Ted Levine and "Miami Vice"'s John Hawkes and John Ortiz.
Sure, 157 minutes is long. But Scott does whatever he can to keep the audience's eyes glued to the screen. With nary a drawback in sight, and a soundtrack replete with 70's R&B and rock (look out for Bobby Womack's soulful "Across 110th Street"), "American Gangster" is definitely another crime epic to fit in a DVD collection of a fan who O.D.'s on films like "Scarface" or "The Godfather".
Movie Review: The loudest person in the room is the weakest person in the room
Summary: 5 Stars
Take a pair of great actors at the top of their game and add a director who plays this movie to his greatest strengths. Add a solid supporting cast. Find a true-crime tale that mixes classic good vs evil into a Mobster story, and you have "American Gangster." For those that have well viewed copies of Scarface, Bugsy or The Godfather Collection in your DVD library, then "American Gangster" should be on your shortlist for fall theater going.
The interesting parallel stories between Crowe's Richie Roberts and Washington's Frank Lucas are what makes a near three hour movie rush by so seamlessly. Both men are doggedly determined to be the uncompromising men they know they should be, with Roberts getting into rocky ground by turning in - and not keeping for himself - a huge stash of found money, and Lucas by deciding he is going to take on the drug trade by reshaping it in his own image. Each man has quirks that show their character's depth, be it Lucas' strict codes of behaviour (a scene where he dresses down his brother for looking like a bad 70's blaxploitation character is very funny) to Richie's marital discord. These scenes show two men on a collision course. Indeed, they don't even share any real screen time till near the end of the movie.
But it is that headlong charge towards the inevitable that gives "American Gangster" its edge. There are hardly any wasted moments here, and given the film's running time, that lack of filler says a lot. Standout performances from Ruby Dee as Momma Lucas and Josh Brolin's cop-on-the-take Lt Trupo also give the movie power. The contrast in lives (Richie's collapsing family as he battles evil compared to Lucas' exceptionally tight-knit family that goes to church on Sunday and distributes Thanksgiving Turkeys even as they sell heroin to anyone with a ten dollar bill) makes for some jarring, disturbing moments. A dark humor leavens parts of the violence...this is a movie that opens with a particularly grisly murder just before a main character bemoans the dearth of local businesses in the old neighborhood. Lucas takes his cue from his old boss, telling his new bride "The man I worked for had one of the biggest companies in New York City. He didn't own his own company. White man owned it, so they owned him. Nobody owns me, though."
However, the real story is that Lucas does make his mistakes, which begin as he breaks one of his own rules and wears a conspicuous coat and draws the eyes of Richie's unit. Lucas' luck lasts as long as the VietNam war plays out, but Scott also throws in one more great line from the overseas supplier that Lucas gets his heroin directly from. They both know that the end of the war means not only is the game over, but anything else they do is of a great risk. What gets Lucas caught is ultimately his own greed, because even his supplier tells him "It's not in my best interest to say this Frank, but quitting while you're ahead, is not the same as quitting." Lucas still can't stop, and arranges one last big score.
The fall of Frank Lucas may filmatically begin there, but this real life "Superfly" is still a bad man we love to see. Washington plays him as all charm and control, love of efficiency and family, a shiny smart veneer covering an explosive and dangerous person. He's the perfect movie villain, and watching Washington play him makes you smell Oscar. After all, we love our Gangster Dramas come Oscar time (The Godfather, The Departed, GoodFellas and The Untouchables to name a few), and with a film as brilliant as "American Gangster," it will be hard for the Academy not to notice.
Movie Review: Eliminating the Middle Man
Summary: 5 Stars
(4.5) Ridley Scott's `American Gangster' has the look and feel of its era. Shot the old-fashioned way, the film brought three films to my mind: `The French Connection,' `The Godfather,' and `Serpico'. They don't make `em like they used to, but Scott really resurrects the seventies in this true tale story of Black organized crime--never told quite this way in movies to my mind. Even the details are transporting: the Nixon and Vietnam broadcasts, Muhammad Ali on a small black and white television, and newly acquired microwaves take us to Harlem and connecting places during that time.
Frank Lewis (Denzel Washington) is smart. His boss, Bumpy, passed away with much fanfare, but gives Frank, his former driver and apprentice, a chance to fill his shoes. Knowing how keep inconspicuous, Frank goes about life business as usual. He is flanked by celebrities and knows to stay away from his heroin operation unless absolutely necessary. Some of the tensest scenes come from confrontations he has with others who draw too much attention to themselves, and much of the violence is on a par with 'Goodfellas'.
On his trail without knowing it, is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), an officer going to school to become a lawyer. He has everything stacked against him. Like Serpico he refuses to take money from bribes or drug busts, which is very tempting since he has to go to court over custody of his son. His partner seems to go along with him until it is revealed that he is doing drug busts to benefit from the graft. Trying to revamp the entire Drug Enforcement Agency, Richie must face a dishonest fellow officer from New Jersey (Josh Brolin) who as a top drug enforcement official, gains the most from bribes that keep the drug operation on the street. Trying to find new fellow recruits (like John Hawke) that are both honest and competent is a trial in itself.
To keep even more unassuming, Frank makes his own connections to Bankok, where he notes heroin is the purest and a connection is stationed in Vietnam. Noting also that there is a high addiction rate among soldiers helps him to smuggle the smack with relative ease. Also learning a business principle from an appliance store, Frank eliminates the middle man--in more ways than one. This maneuvering also gives Frank more leverage when negotiating with the Italian Mafia, whom he reduces in revenue and importance.
Besides an intricate story, Ridley Scott offers the best aspects of celebrated seventies movies. Denzel Washington is as smooth as ever, and Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin, and Chiwetel Ejiofor are in fine form, especially comparing their other roles this year in '3:10 to Yuma,' `No Country for Old Men,' and `Talk to Me' respectively.
When Frank's family leaves church with the sounds of "Amazing Grace," one can't help but think of `The Godfather' where Michael Carleone (Al Pacino) witnesses his son's baptism as scenes of blood and violence interrupt the images of stained glass and solace in the church. One of the great draws of this film is how it demonstrates so many ironies working together in one true life gangster story. Just like `Traffic` before it, `American Gangster' offers that supply and demand is a mighty tool that can make or break people's lives. As Frank himself says, "Either you're somebody or you're nobody." What I liked so much about the film is that even with the grim contrast between haves and have nots, the movie left me with hope, which is a good way to leave a film. (Based on the book `Return of the Superfly'.)
Movie Review: My Man!
Summary: 5 Stars
Well you've got a powerful lot of talent collaborating on this film and this time out it really pays off. I don't think there's a better screenwriter than Steve Zaillian, who has an amazing range of superior work to his credit, and he comes through again, getting to the guts of a complex and morally ambiguous story. Putting this difficult work in the hands of an accomplished technician like Ridley Scott was likewise fortunate, for although Ridley's work is always slick and professional the foundations of some of his films have sometimes been a tad shallow. Here he has some real tough stuff to work with, and his craft enables a large story to be told well. I can't find fault with either script or execution, and found this nearly 3 hour epic moved nimbly and was thoroughly engrossing as well as entertaining.
And then you get two heavyweights in the leads with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe doing fine work in what are essentially two different movies that tell parallel stories until their final convergence in the last third or so of the film. And they are great stories of the cop and the gangster, paradoxical and ironic in their depiction of the two men's contrasting values and lives. They are aided and abetted with strong performances in all the supporting roles.
Denzel's Frank Lucas is a charismatic, pragmatic, and ultimately ambiguous figure. A man capable of anything in the name of business, in this instance the business of heroin trafficking in Harlem of the 60's and 70's. Trusting no one else, he brings his North Carolina family into this world, and his personal life is kept immaculate, natty, ordered and even loving. He is by turns a cool and enigmatic charmer, and a wily and thoroughly ruthless and violent criminal. Nobody can play that kind of character combining the steely gaze of the calculating manipulator with the suddenly disarming killer smile better than Denzel Washington and he is terrific.
Russell Crowe's Richie Roberts is an obsessively honest cop alienated within a New York police force of that era rife with corruption. The flow of money and the moral ambiguity has reached the point where even the famous French Connection dope has been stolen out of impoundment and re-sold to the dealers. Richie's personal life is a disaster when we first meet him, and his stubborn and rigorously solitary ways have alienated his wife as well as his cop peers. A seemingly hopelessly stalled career as a cop is resuscitated when he is selected to lead his own hand-picked crew to specialize in going after big time dope dealers, a move that will eventually put him on a collision course with Denzel's Frank Lucas. Crowe finds not only the ornery tenacity of a man who cannot compromise his principles, but also the difficulty of life around and with such an individual, and the price he pays for his rigor.
Fine work all around, beautifully filmed, with a vibrant and exciting pace and exceptionally fine story-telling in enabling the audience to follow these two diverse and complicated threads. This film takes its place with the best of the genre, and there are echoes and recognition and respect paid to those great films like Goodfellows and most especially The French Connection. This has some of that same gritty contrast of the scruffy cops versus the good-life criminals, and an inside look at the casual cruelty and violence that buys that "good life". And there is a fine and ironic coda to the whole story that is a satisfying final comment on moral ambiguity. Well worthwhile.
Movie Review: Well worth full price admission and later purchase of the DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
What the world needs is order and when Frank Lucas' (Denzel Washington's) boss dies, Frank steps up to the plate to take over Harlem. Being the astute businessman he is, he realizes there's a significant problem. Local drug dealers are buying their heroin from the Mob, then they get busted by the NYPD. The NYPD takes the dope, cuts it down, and leaves enough of the evidence to convict, then resells the drugs to the drug dealers.
Frank figures if he can go to Vietnam, he can get the heroin straight from the fields and fly it in on US Army planes. He can use his substantial family to act as distributors. He puts his plan into action and his "Blue Magic" takes Harlem by storm. Soon, Frank has managed to do what no other Black man could--he's making terms with the Mafia. He's living the American Dream, dining with stars and athletes, with a gorgeous wife on his arm--and he's still taking care of Harlem, too, handing out turkeys for Thanksgiving like his old boss did.
Meanwhile, Det. Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is taking law classes while he works the beat. He and his partner make a million dollar bust--and anger the whole police department by having the audacity to turn the money in against his partner's advice. This marks Roberts as a troublemaker.
Roberts has his own view of the system: "Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. They stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job." It's basically the theory so many people espouse about Government--it's not here to solve problems, but to manage them. Roberts sees thousands killed everyday from drugs and related violence and wants to stop it. And, he wants to stop police corruption as well.
Roberts is not the kind of man who takes the easy way out. When his former partner is caught in a tenement having shot a drug dealer with an angry mob outside, Roberts goes in alone to help. His solution to get his partner out alive is ingenious--and keeps you on the edge of your seat.
It's inevitable the two men are going to collide. The film essentially deals with the build-up of Frank's business, Roberts' investigation, and the ending for both men.
The supporting cast in "Gangster" was strong. Of particular note are Ruby Dee in a nomination-worthy performance as Mama Lucas and Josh Brolin as Lt. Trupo, a cop so crooked he made the gangsters look good.
The research on this film is obvious. I saw an interview with Denzel Washington talking about the time he spent with Frank Lucas trying to get into character. Even at an advanced age, the original American Gangster was still in charge.
Director, Ridley Scott did an amazing job recreating a 30 year old world. The details from the rotary telephones to the music played are spot on.
Warning: The world "American Gangster" depicts isn't often pretty--drug preparation, use, and abuse are shown in graphic detail. There's some nudity and violence; however, the film was not near as vicious as I expected it would be.