American Gangster
Composite Score: 82.64
Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Lymari Nadal, Ted Levine, Roger Guenveur Smith, John Hawkes, Malcolm Goodwin, Ruby Dee, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Carla Gugino, John Ortiz, Cuba Gooding Jr., T.I., and Idris Elba
Director: Ridley Scott
Writer: Steve Zaillian
Genres: Biography, Crime, Drama
MPAA Rating: R for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity, and sexuality
Box Office: $269.76 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
American Gangster is the film dramatization of the rise and fall of New York drug lord Frank Lucas at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. The Ridley Scott film stars Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas and Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, the officer who headed an investigation of Lucas and later defended him as a lawyer. The film has been heralded for Washington’s show-stopping performance as the no-nonsense, nose-to-the-grindstone, by-any-means-necessary style of gangster that the film seeks to portray Lucas as. Because of the period of history being explored, there are plenty of topical references to events and circumstances that remain relevant today, which help give the film its staying power among the greats.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
In a lot of ways, American Gangster is simply overstuffed. There are too many stories for the film to feel like a fully cohesive narrative. There are too many characters for any but the two leads to stand out as individuals, and then just barely. There are too many historical inaccuracies for the film to feel truly biographic. In the end, if they had cut back on the Richie Roberts side of the narrative and only focused on Frank Lucas (or even vice versa), it probably ends up as a much better film than the one that released in theaters. To the best of my knowledge, the film’s extended version does very little to clean up its messes and only adds to an already convoluted group of storylines. For as great as Denzel’s performance is, I wish the overall story was more fine-tuned to make it a truly epic character study of this complex “American gangster”.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
Denzel Washington absolutely carries American Gangster on his shoulders. From the beginning when he is quietly working behind the scenes to set up his rise to power to his peak as a drug lord/gangster when he can kill rivals out in the open with no fear of retaliation to his ultimate collapse and arrest, Denzel Washington portrays Frank Lucas as one of the most complex heroes/antiheroes/villains that has ever been put to screen. On the one hand, he took so much power out of the hands of organized crime in New York and New Jersey while exposing a slew of dirty cops in the process. On the other hand, he was gunning down rivals in the streets and highly paranoid about police surveillance (often from dirty cops). And on a third hand, he was responsible for a massive amount of heroin hitting the streets of New York City. His drive to succeed and bring his family and community along with him in the process are all portrayed as noble causes, while his ruthlessness, paranoia, and ultimate disloyalty leave him as a perfectly morally ambiguous protagonist for a crime film, none of which could have been accomplished without Denzel’s stellar performance.
In addition to a strong showing from Denzel Washington, American Gangster also does a good enough job in exploring its peripheral issues as to be commendable. The issue of dirty cops lies at the film’s center and is explored mainly through conversations between Frank Lucas and Josh Brolin’s Detective Trupo and through contrasts between the cops of Richie’s unit and those of Trupo’s. The film does not shy away from implying that the vast majority of cops (at least in the New York area) are corrupt or would be willing to become corrupt given the chance without putting a fully blanket statement on it, instead serving as a reminder of the corrupting nature of power. In a similar way, the issues of racial inequality, class issues, and veteran treatment following the Vietnam War all feature around the edges of the film. American Gangster deals with each in a way that acknowledges and forces the audience to acknowledge the issues without ever feeling aggressively political in its presentation. It presents the facts of racial and class inequality and veteran drug addiction in refreshingly matter-of-fact ways that do little to detract from the film’s overall plot and, indeed, enhance it in many ways, considering its convoluted nature.
Topical issues handled with tact and an absolute powerhouse performance from Denzel Washington are the building blocks that have made American Gangster into one of the Greatest Films of All Time. The film’s overly complex story and borderline excessive run-time might be enough to keep some people away from this one, but they’ll be missing out on one of the best Denzel-as-a-criminal performances in his extensive catalogue. This film is currently available to stream on the Roku Channel or to rent on most streaming services if you are looking to check it out.
