American Gangster

Ridley Scott's crime drama American Gangster hinges on two men who are the exception rather than the rule when it comes to their respective occupations.

When New Jersey police officer Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) finds $1 million in unmarked bills, he turns it in. It's the right thing, sure, but an act that marks him as a threat among the dirty cops around him. He and his partner become pariahs for doing their job while other cops sell confiscated dope out of the evidence room to make side careers. Roberts is a cop clearly in opposition to the film's average officer.

Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, an honest cop

Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a Harlem drug syndicate heir, changes the way street dealers do business: he cuts out the middleman. Seeing the new convenience-store, fast-food culture of the late 1960s, he refuses to merely sell drugs for the Italian mob and instead buys pure, uncut heroin direct from Vietnam. Lucas becomes the Wal-Mart of Heroin. He buys low and passes the savings to the customer. Of course, New York mob kingpins aren't so happy with this spirit of innovation. Lucas is a gangster clearly in opposition to the film's average dealer.

The Lucas-Roberts parallel is cemented in the end when Lucas tells Roberts that "your kind" (i.e., dirty cops) helped his rise to power. "They aren't my kind," Roberts sneers. "If they're in business with you, they aren't my kind. Just like Italians aren't yours."

In many ways, Lucas and Roberts are similar: driven, innovative, dedicated, and relentless. If they were on the same side, you can imagine them being dangerous and as thick as thieves (or cops). Instead, they are the opposite pillars that Scott uses to build American Gangster's epic retelling of a true story. It's the classic crime movie structure: a powerful crime lord builds his kingdom as a determined cop works to rip that empire down. Lucas and Roberts pull themselves up by the bootstraps, discover what sets them apart, and build armies around them until those armies finally clash in a fast, bloody and realistically chaotic showdown.

Denzel Washington as gangster Frank Lucas

This movie sets itself apart from most crime dramas in a few ways: 1) The parallel theme of Lucas' and Roberts' differences from those around them, 2) equal time given to both sides of the law, and 3) with a plot arc not just on Lucas' rise and fall, but also on both men's pursuit against corrupt cops.

Because of these elements, the story of the real-life Lucas and Richards is a perfect crime story for director Scott to delve into. The historical element lends extra heft and originality—few fictional crime dramas would end not with the climatic raid (which is there), but with lengthy plea-bargains and investigations. Scott leverages the unique qualities of the story, its nuances of reality, and stellar acting by its Oscar-winning leads into a well-crafted and gritty drama that hits all the right strides for a crime film.

Ruby Dee is terrific as Frank's mother

However, even with its substantial successes, the movie feels like it's hitting all those right strides quite medicinally—as if it's a paint-by-number crime thriller merely meeting checkpoints in order to fit the genre. Graphic beatings? Check. Shocking moment of brutality? Check. Ironic montage of death juxtaposed with family/religious moments? Check. This gives an otherwise excellently-crafted film an impersonal, sterile and soulless feel. It's almost a mere chronicle of what happened instead of an involving, pulsating story. It just doesn't have the heart to make you care more than observe.

The only real heart comes in scenes with Lucas' family. Scenes of Lucas with his mother, brothers, sisters and their families give the film shots of personality and warmth. In fact, the emotive, unrestrained and endearing range of Ruby Dee as Mama Lucas—from joy, to sentimentality to spitting rage—provides a welcome rush of emotion in an otherwise dark, faceless and sterile tale.

Lucas and Roberts have it out in a more civil manner

That other characters seem to lack emotion is not a condemnation of anyone else's acting. It's just what the movie requires out of Crowe and Washington. Meeting on-screen for the first time since 1995's sci-fi chase movie Virtuosity, both actors portray very hard men who play it close to the chest. While both actors create very defined characters, neither is very engaging or personable. Washington is cold, calculated, simmering—business-like. He's simple, quiet, and tough as nails. Washington's winning grin is almost entirely absent as his hard-set frown seethes power and anger. Crowe plays his New Jersey cop as a good man with honor and conviction, but one who is very raw—close to his thoughtful, lumbering brute cop in L. A. Confidential. His anger, deceit and messiness are just barely under the surface.

While Crowe and Washington are the heavy-hitters in American Gangster, Ruby Dee and Josh Brolin deserve notice for their characters. As the corrupt Detective Trupo, Brolin is fascinatingly dynamic and captivating. (It's hard to believe this guy was once Brand Walsh in The Goonies.)

Like the acting, all the technical aspects (including the directing, the '60s and '70s set design, the music and the writing) are of a very high (and possibly award-winning) quality. But in this finely built skeleton, the heart was somehow left out.

Talk About It

1. What does this film say to you about justice—both in general and the enforcement of it in the U.S.? Do you think police corruption is as rampant now as it is depicted here in the '60s and '70s? Explain. At the end of the film, a subtitle says that Roberts became a defense attorney and later defended Lucas—the man he arrested. Does this information change your opinion—or cause any confusion or questions—about Roberts' character? If so, how?
2. Roberts is portrayed as a good cop who never takes bribes and does the right thing. However, his ex-wife points out that while he may pride himself on being an honest cop, his personal life is another story. Why do you think this subplot of Roberts' cheating, womanizing ways was included in the film? Why do you a man so honorable in one part of his life, be so dishonorable in another?
3. Lucas is shown many times in church or praying. Why do you think that was included? How could a man of faith possibly justify actions like Lucas'?
4. Crime films often delve fully into dark, grisly subject matter to tell their stories. What are the merits of crime films? Could a truly effective crime film be made without showing the violence and profanity? Can films focus on crime lords, and not glorify them or their acts? Does this one?

The Family Corner

American Gangster is rated R for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality. The profanity includes everything under the sun and frequently. The drug content is constant. People sell drugs, discuss drugs and graphically and repeatedly take them (by shooting up mainly). For the most part, heroin use is shown realistically unglamorously, ugly and harmful. The violence is graphic and realistically depicted in mad blurs of blood and death. There's a point-blank handgun execution in public and a graphic scene of a man burned alive. While there is only one sex scene (with clothes on but still graphic), the movie has frequent female nudity mainly in scenes of women packaging dope (naked so they can't steal).

Photos © Copyright Universal Pictures

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