American Gangster

What if you could take Scarface, mix it with New Jack City and do it all with the style and thoughtfulness of the Godfather? You would have a transcendent movie. It would take huge stars that can really act to pull that off. You would need people like Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. You would need a story like that of real life drug lord Frank Lucas. You would need American Gangster. Many of my very favorite movies are gangster films like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Untouchables. From the cast and the previews and what I knew of the real story, I really thought American Gangster had a shot to join these movies in that elite class of organized crime classics. Sadly, it fell well short.

It was, by no means, a terrible movie, it just wasn’t anything special and when you consider the potential it was certainly a disappointment. Basically, this movie was the big screen version of HBO’s shamefully ignored series “The Wire.” It copied the characters, the set up and even the basic storyline. It just lacked, the gritty reality, inspired writing and detailed plot development of The Wire. Oh, and the characters weren’t nearly as interesting. But for those of you who have seen The Wire, you can pass on this movie where Washington plays Stringer Bell, Crowe plays McNulty and the guy who played Stringer even makes a brief appearance no doubt thinking, we’ve done this better already.

I think Hollywood is in real trouble actually. I consistently see movies now that seem like a long episode of a TV show, but not any better than what is on TV. I think HBO has really raised the stakes and now if you are going to take on a genre covered by a show they’ve done, it is going to be very tough to improve on a full season or seasons with just 2 hours. It used to be that budget and more freedom to show adult subject matter gave movies an insurmountable advantage over TV, but now HBO and even other cable channels are outdoing the studio folks. Then add in the constant improvement in home theaters. No wonder we see an increasing number of movie stars moving to TV.

Anyway, American Gangster does star Washington and Crowe and was directed by on again off again Ridley Scott. I mean, he has lifetime credibility for Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, but that’s holding up a mounting list of bad or disappointing films. Still, it seemed like a good combo. Washington plays a real life drug lord from the 1970s, Frank Lucas, who used America’s presence in Vietnam to get better, cheaper drugs and used the best principles of capitalism to put his drug dealing competition out of business. Crow plays the only honest cop in New York who ends up as the Ness to Denzel’s Capone.

Unfortunately, the movie leaves out what should have been the most interesting parts of the story. How did Washington’s character rise to power? How did he thwart law enforcement for so long? How did he get connected? Etc. There were just so many details raced by. It is possible to take a ton of material and still pack it into a great movie. Just look at the Lord of the Rings movies. But this movie failed to do it. There were some good scenes and some good acting, but honestly, the movie seemed like someone thought all they had to do was put Scott behind the camera and put Washington and Crowe in front of it and a good movie would happen. That doesn’t actually sound so dumb, but it is.

The movie was hamstrung I think by lack of direction. You can’t show someone’s whole life, so you have to decide what to focus on. Take on too many years or too many angles and you have to leave out too many details and the story suffers. They wanted to show the glamour and “cool” factor of Denzel as a super bad pimped out hustler, but to assuage their guilt over glamorizing the drug trade, they offered a few out of place shots of junkies in the slums. Instead of offering balance, they simply served as ugly photographs thumb-tacked to the bottom of a large painting. They didn’t offer a new perspective so much as served as an unpleasant distraction.

The acting was generally good, though a bit understated and the look of the movie was good, but other than that, this film missed about everywhere you could. Like I said, it was not a terrible movie as this review probably suggests, but just failed to distinguish itself in any way.
Here is some more information designed to help you determine whether you might enjoy this movie:

--This is not an action movie. The pace is pretty slow, so if you are going in hoping for guns blazing, stay home and rent Man on Fire or something like that.

--There is not a ton of violence and I don’t recall any sex scenes (though there may have been), but there are plenty of ugly images of drug use, some violence and some nudity, so if that ruins a movie for you, take a pass on this one. Language was somewhat harsh, but not too bad.

--It is long. 157 minutes to be exact.

--Despite many women having secret or not so secret crushes on Denzel, I don’t see this movie appealing to women much and both Denzel and Crowe look old and kind of paunchy anyway. Speaking of the actors though, keep an eye out for Lymari Nadal who played Denzel’s love interest. She was pretty and did a good job in a very limited role.

American Gangster was the movie I was most excited about this fall. Now that mantle is passed to “No Country for Old Men.” Surely, the Cohen brothers won’t let me down. I’ll let you know.