Ridley Scott: AMERICAN GANGSTER

[mouton]

AMERICAN GANGSTER
Written by Steve Zaillian
Directed by Ridley Scott

Frank Lucas: The loudest one in the room is the weakest one.

That’s some solid advice from an unflappable, businessman/innovator who also happens to house an unshakable tyranny beneath his nondescript black overcoat. The man is Frank Lucas – a North Carolina-born crime boss who sold top quality heroine at discount-store prices to the good people of Harlem in the late 1960’s and ‘70’s. The advice would have been better taken than given as one loud moment, one indulgence in pride and riches, would ultimately lead to his unraveling. Having accepted an innocent gift from his beautiful wife, Lucas arrived at boxing title bout in a pimped-out chinchilla fur coat and matching fedora. All eyes were drawn to the man who dressed with such impeccable flare and had better seats than some of the highest profile gangsters in all of New York City. One of these sets of eyes belonged to Richie Roberts, a Jersey detective who was heading a covert task force determined to make big moves in the war on drugs. Before this, Richie didn’t even know whom he was hunting but now he at least knew where to start looking. That moment is now a pivotal scene in Ridley Scott’s AMERICAN GANGSTER, a juxtaposition of Lucas’s rise and demise offset against the blind pursuit to bring his untouchable operation to its knees.

AMERICAN GANGSTER is (aside from seeming like a blatant attempt on Scott’s part to latch on to some of the residual success from Scorsese’s return to glory with THE DEPARTED) an exploration of the vast field of gray between what is supposed to be the clear black and white ends of the law spectrum. Lucas (a fiercely calculated Denzel Washington) hands out turkeys to his Harlem brethren while getting their children hooked on some of the purest heroine on the streets. Roberts (a disheveled and determined Russell Crowe) refuses to play into the dirty cop stereotype, even going so far as handing close to a million dollars into his superiors, but disrespects his ex-wife and disregards his responsibilities as a father. Still, both see themselves as examples that should be followed because they follow a strict life code built on core American values like integrity and hard work. What neither understands about themselves or each other is that abiding by such a rigid set of guidelines for a successful life touches every facet of your image, from where you live to what you eat for dinner to how you treat your family. Not to mention, while they spend so much time defining themselves as model Americans, they lose their individuality.

Both Washington and Crowe are impressive performers, each boasting past experience that would make them clear choices for the roles they were cast as in AMERICAN GANGSTER. Washington, having done twisted and unpredictably violent in TRAINING DAY, now takes a more stoic approach to evil as he is unflinching even when lighting someone on fire only to shoot them in the head seconds later. (I guess he just needed to be sure his last moments alive were spent in agony.) Crowe, having played the manly cop in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, brings a certain nervous uncertainty to the authority figure icon. Each is capable of carrying a film on his own and, in AMERICAN GANGSTER, they each essentially have to as the two share the screen for what amounts to maybe ten minutes. In what is perhaps Scott’s greatest movie magic trick, he splits the film into two distinct pieces that exist on their own but depend on each other for purpose. While Roberts runs around the city chasing after Lucas, he never knows that it is Lucas he is actually gunning for. At the same time, Lucas never knows Roberts is after him until it is too late.

All that stands between Crowe and Washington now is Ridley Scott. There is no contesting AMERICAN GANGSTER’s ferocity but its dynamism is severely overrated. Good cops and bad cops have been done to death (although none nearly as delicious as the sleazy turn by Josh Brolin as the crooked cop ringmaster) and the same can be said for bad guys who love their mothers. By now, we all know the world is gray but strong performances, a sharp 70’s visual style and companion soundtrack do their best to distract us from seeing that we aren’t really learning anything new. The action moves into the clubs. The threads are slick; the tunes are smooth; the club is definitely swinging but the scene is getting tired.

www.blacksheepreviews.com

[tabuno]

The problem with AMERICAN GANGSTER wasn't that it had been done before and in fact mouton's own commentary made me appreciate this movie even more than when I saw it. mouton's commentary provided a further creative angle that now reflecting back on makes this movie even better than I experienced. Nevertheless, the problem I had with AMERCIAN GANGSTER was the missing plot details and gaps in character development that I feel could have made this movie quite good. Additionally, there was an unnecessary Denzel Washington chase scene that seemed to be tacked on just for the action-thrills it provided but didn't really add much to the movie. Overall, I feel that this movie is abit overrated, but it was definitely a cinematic accomplishment with a few important details left out and fluff added in.

[oscar jubis]

Not a bad gangster flick, I say. But so what. Here's a pretty good excerpt which conveys why, for me, American Gangster just fails to get over its genre trappings. First time I quote Denby or anyone who writes for The New Yorker.

"Our loyalties are split between the hero of virtue and the hero of vice. We don’t have to choose, which is fine—irresponsibility is one of the pleasures of narrative movies. But can we accept the movie’s glorification of Frank Lucas in the terms in which it’s offered? It’s true that movie audiences have always relished gangsters. They act out our fantasies of unlimited aggression, and when they are punished with death we are purged of the guilt we’ve felt from enjoying their rampages. The greatest gangster movies, however, deepen this transaction, taking us closer to the gangster’s hopes and illusions, and then turning them inside out. In “The Godfather: Part II,” Michael Corleone grows in power and then ravages his family—the thing he most wanted to protect—and we can see him rotting like a dead oak. In “Goodfellas,” Ray Liotta’s narration revels in the abundant pleasures of criminality, but, as the bad times keep coming, the narration turns anxious and, finally, harrowing. In “American Gangster,” however, Frank’s ascent is presented simply—not with irony, or as a mini-tragedy, or as a cruel joke on his own community, but as a long-delayed victory of black capitalism. The Mafia, represented by Dominic Cattano (Armand Assante), an immensely dignified grandee, condescends to Frank but then offers to buy some of his product at a discounted rate. The Mafia, in effect, works for Frank, who winds up again and again impressing people not disposed to be impressed by a black man. The movie associates him with Muhammad Ali and, for an instant, with Martin Luther King, Jr. Frank’s success, we’re meant to believe, is a strike against racism.

It’s not as if Zaillian and Scott ignore the results of Frank’s trade. On the contrary, there are innumerable shots of needles going into the arms of black men and women in Harlem, who then waver from the dope like palm fronds in the heat. But none of this devastation alters the approving portrayal of Frank. After a while, the shallowness of his characterization and the movie’s glib impassivity become a little unnerving, and viewers may ask why it’s supposed to be better that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in Harlem were destroyed by black gangsters rather than by Italians. Near the end of the movie, Frank’s mother, in the iconic person of Ruby Dee, slaps him across the face, but that moral judgment comes too late, and it isn’t prepared for."
(David Denby, The New Yorker)

[tabuno]

oscar jubis quoting Denby from the New Yorker by mom's favorite magazine provides me with a nice explanation of my uneasiness with this movie. It would be of interest to me as to how much of this movie reflects reality and how Frank Lucas experienced and was characterized on screen and reality. How do we judge, evaluate, moralize murder? How do we balance a corrupt law enforcement officer who has betrayed out trust, ignoring the murder of people even though he doesn't do the actual killing and the more complex, three-dimensional character who actual murders people unlawfully, almost seemingly without guilt, compassion, or remorse. In examining Denzel Washington's characterizaton of Frank Lucas, one can almost see a superficial persona who has no core self, but has accumulated all the trappings of goodness and evil and surrounds himself with a narcissistic/antisocial ability to become amoral and almost feel his own ego grow as he helps his own family that only feeds his own ego not for his family but for himself.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm scheduled to see American Gangster in London tonight.

So at last you quote The New Yorker, Oscar! Bully for you! This is not Denby at his best--and he does have a best as a film reviewer and not just as a maker of smooth phrases that Rosenbaum admires. He seems curiously dense about the moral blankness of this film. He notes it, but he seems insufficiently outraged by it. i thought that when I read the review some time ago.

However i am only saying that before seeing the actual film myself.

i am a bit surprised at the good reviews the film has been getting. i saw the trailer so many times and it has always looked slick and empty to me. We'll see.

[oscar jubis]

(Also in reply to your comment about American Gangster's metacritic score).
Most critics and audiences are more impressed by slick, polished, well-made genre films than I am. There seems to be an insatiable hunger for crime films: serial-killer films, procedurals, gangster films, court-room dramas, whatever. The bulk of these films follow long-established formulas. I'm willing to admit this is what mainstream audiences seem to enjoy. Perhaps because I've been watching several films per week since I was a little kid, I crave originality. It's hard to find at the multiplex. I'm also especially adverse to any film that glorifies violence, whether vigilante violence, or violence shrouded in patriotism, or whatever. American Gangster is a "damn good gangster film" and that is a lot less attractive to me than to a lot of critics and moviegoers. To me, the film is "worth seeing" and nothing more.

[Chris Knipp]

I saw it last night as promised, in a full house at Whiteley's Odeon, Bayswater, London. And they were quiet. At first I enjoyed it very much. It unreels with momentum and confidence and of course Washington and Crowe are reliably strong. IT dragged a bit toward the end with the inevitable generation of the empire, and thought the technique and editing were good and fresh the material was as you say, Oscar, fairly routine. So I am left without a strong memory of the thing. I will post more detailed comments soon, hopefully. Today: The Counterfeiters, sheduled to open limited in the US in late February 2008. in reply to your comments on unconventionality, i am happy when something completely mainstream really grabs me, or when something that really grabs me is nonetheless mainstream, but of course that happens infrequently.

[oscar jubis]

We agree Chris.
This film is being considered as a possible Oscar contender (or is it the studio Publicity Dep. making it seem that way). Yet, there are four posters on this thread and we all agree the film is not that good.

[Chris Knipp]

RIDLEY SCOTT: AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007)

Superfly gets a posh makeover

Review by Chris Knipp

Scott's flashy, energetic gangster biopic loosely follows the story of a real black drug importer and dealer of late Sixties, early Sevenities Harlem. Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington with his usual rush of energy and charisma) did indeed learn the ropes of organized crime from his black boss Bumpy Johnson, did import drugs from Southeast Asia using military connections, did bring his North Carolina family up to be his network for heroin distribution, and was brought down by cops and made deals with Ritchie Roberts (played with his usual conviction and strength by Russell Crowe). Moreover Roberts and Lucas did work together to bring down various dealers and crooked cops--and get Lucas off with only 15 (or maybe fewer) years in jail, not served consecutively.

One can't help being of two minds about this film. In many ways it's just another gangster movie, and scenes in it will awaken memories of many others of the genre. It's hard to consider the black Superfly hero exactly a new creation either. Lucas apparently was not really the wealthiest or most successful black drug dealer, though he's made to seem so here. (The real Lucas reportedly was a definite presence in the shooting of the film and in the views of others is responsible for a number of distortions of the facts.)

But the director of Blade Runner and Thelma and Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down is not your average crap film director. He is a crap film director who can produce the occasional cult classic, and who awakens disturbed admiration even at times when his effort is somehow revolting. This film has great momentum and confidence, and its first half is a pleasure to watch. As seen here, and in the tall, regal embodiment of Denzel Washington, Frank Lucas is more than a top-dog gangster. He's a black hero and a bold economic pioneer, because he explicitly steps forth from the mold set by his mentor, Bumpy (Clarence Williams III in the film) to bypass the Italians and sell pure heroin, his own trademarked brand, at a lower price than the adulterated stuff on the street-- bypassing the usual wholesalers and setting up his own distribution system. And yet, while establishing a purely black business, he followed Italian traditions in making that business his own kind of cosa nostra--once again a family concern, with his own mother (a glossily distinguished old lady, played by Ruby Dee) brought up to preside over a huge white plantation-style manse, taken over, refurbished in an elegant Afro style, and manned by discreet southern black crooks.


So what we have here is a very hollow victory for Black liberationists. A black man who achieved the distinction of feeding heroin to Harlem's addicts all by himself, without white supervision or control (though with the necessary collusion of croked white drug cops). Hooray. While the movie avoids a great deal of gratuitous brutality (and the mass killing spree is carried out at the end by the whie cops, wiping out Luicas' main heroin packaging station), he is clearly a very cruel man, capable of bashing in or blowing off a head at a moment's notice.

Whatever distortion there may be, the glorification of the hero being the most morally dubious one, there are some convincing factual elements. Generally speaking an early-Seventies feel is nicely achieved through the use of down-tinted color and many, but not overstated, period outfits and hairdos. It's also an interesting point brought out in Scott's occasionally documentary-style passages that in the early Seventies American soldiers were returning Stateside in droves addicted to opium or heroin; that their various R&R points (notably Bangkok) obviously were well supplied with these drugs and accustomed to purveying them to Americans; and that (in the film anyway) Lucas went in country himself to find and cut a deal with a local kingpin, using a military cousin as the future intermediary. This is bold and original, but the boldest and most original stroke of all was to bypass organized crime. An independent businessman? The essence of American entrepreneur-ism? Hooray again.

There appears to be exaggeration and blurring of facts in the depiction of Russell Crowe's character, New Jersey crime fighter Ritchie Roberts, as a noble yet flawed opponent. Here Lucas may not have influenced the final cut, since he reportedly says Ritchie was a man who could not have arrested his own mother. It's really at the end that Ritchie stepped in to cut deals as a prosecutor, and the cops who worked to bring Lucas down are underplayed or demonized.

Again as in New Jack City and some other films we're treated to repeated shots of a Harlem heroin packing plant staffed by naked nubile black women. Maybe they're essential to the story? How much is mythology here? Relatives of the real Ritchie say he wasn't a deadbeat dad as reported, because he wasn't a dad at all, and also not a philanderer. There is so much departure from the facts here, and yet the ending with its ritual string of onscreen text-message follow-ups is mechanical and anti-climactic. Accomplished as it is, Scott's compellingly grand new black gangster movie is finally just another link in a conventional chain.

[bix171]

Ridley Scott's competent, cold film shows an unusual lack of inspiration: it's a pastiche of a number of films both in visual style ("The Godfather", "Apocalypse Now") and in content ("The French Connection", "Serpico", Brian DePalma's "Scarface"); Scott even appropriates the flat, naturalistically bleached-out cinematography of the seventies. Writer Steven Zaillian's cliched script posits that the real American gangster is the big bad American corporation that cuts out the middleman. Zaillian distills this ruthlessness into Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) a suave, almost mythically perfect African American (he's a true family man who can have childhood furniture rebuilt through recall--and he's a devestatingly accurate skeet shooter to boot) who builds his heroin empire by providing a superior product at an undercutting cost while eliminating the middleman. But the message is severely muddled: while Scott and Zaillian earnestly take pains to show the horrific consequences of the drugs Lucas peddles, they positively revel in the ingenuity and diligence he shows in creating a smooth, professional operation that is the epitome of free enterprise (and they get to gleefully dismantle it too). None of this triteness, however, really matters--when a film has nothing new or interesting to say, it turns to its actors to fill the screen with distracting performances and Washington and Russell Crowe attack their roles with sincere hopes that Oscar will remember at least one of them at awards time.

[Chris Knipp]

I'd agree that your judgments are completely valid, even if you've perhaps couched them in unnecessarily harsh terms given the energy of the production and the conviction and power of the performances. It doesn't feel as bad as you make it sound, and it isn't--merely being traditional doesn't damn a film, especially when it has top notch actors in the foreground throughout. It's also perhaps a bit misleading to say "Steven Zaillian's cliched script posits " things, as if he were creating a pure construct, when the story is more or less faithfully based on the lives of the principals, even if some elements are disputed. Nonetheless you can call Scott's and Zaillian's Frank Lucas "almost mythically perfect." I also quite agree that the "message" is "severely muddled"--though such messages almost always are, and things wouldn't necessarily be improved for the viewer if they weren't. I don't think Crowe or Washington have strong Oscar hopes from this movie.

[tabuno]

Chris Knipp:

I don't think Crowe or Washington have strong Oscar hopes from this movie.

This movie just has that feel, mood something that both the audience and critics fall into voting for. I expect to see one or both Crowe and Washington nominated.

[bix171]

It's also perhaps a bit misleading to say "Steven Zaillian's cliched script posits " things, as if he were creating a pure construct, when the story is more or less faithfully based on the lives of the principals, even if some elements are disputed.

Just because the script is, as you say, "more or less faithfully based on the lives of the principals" doesn't mean there isn't some attempt to create a metaphorically-charged tale of ideals. I didn't see "American Gangster" as a biography as much as a rumination on this country's emphasis on free enterprise and its consequences. There's a lot I could say about the positioning of both lead characters and the fact that their lives move in opposite directions (Frank Lucas' devotion to his family vs. Ritchie Roberts' lack of devotion to his) but, to me, that underscores the metaphors they represent, not actual people.

your judgments are completely valid, even if you've perhaps couched them in unnecessarily harsh terms given the energy of the production and the conviction and power of the performances

I thought the film was mediocre, but I didn't think I was trying to be harsh. I've never been a fan of Ridley Scott--he just doesn't seem to be that smart, caring more about the way a film looks than what it actually says.

Come to think of it, maybe I am being harsh. Oh well.

[tabuno]

bix171:

I've never been a fan of Ridley Scott--he just doesn't seem to be that smart, caring more about the way a film looks than what it actually says.

I've been a great fan of Ridley Scott ever since I first experienced his directorship in ALIEN (1979) which in my mind is one of my top ten favorite movies. I will admit to not embracing all of Mr. Scott's movies but in terms of having something to say I strongly feel that there were some great movies that had substance as well as the famous Ridley Scott's dense, layering for design detail.

Substantive good looking movies:

ALIEN (1979). The naturalistic directorship of average people distressed by a monster alien was spectacular and often missed in this movie was the relationship between Ripley and Lambert as well as Ripley's breakout role as a strong female lead character as well as the subtle but important humanistic (feminine) nod towards saving Jones the act.
BLADERUNNER (1982). One of the most famous of sci fi movies of all time, this groundbreaking movie raised important value questions regarding what it is to be human and looked into the dark, wet future of mankind.
THELMA & LOUISE (1991). Also another famous casting of two strong, rebel female role models, offering America a new look at the American female.
G.I. JANE (1997). Unlike many individuals, I found this a solid and engaging movie that spoke a lot about women and in this role of a man's man's occupation. This is a bold but apparently failed move on the part of both Mr. Ripley and Demi Moore.
BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001). Before the growth of anti-war sentiment, Mr. Scott director this great looking, intense war movie that revealed the dark side of America at war. This was a BIG statement of substance at the time.
MATCHSTICK MEN (2003). A powerful movie about con men and the ending was quite shocking and resonant with substantive emotional drama in regards the great con. This movie had a strong message about human behavior.

Ok Movies:

BLACK RAIN (1989). A clash of Japanese and American cultures.
HANNIBAL (2001). A credible adaptation of the novel to the screen along with Anthony Hopkins usual superlative performance in one of the most likeable and famous bad guys in cinema.
A GOOD YEAR (2006). A tribute to Russell Crowe in a decent movie that revealed Mr. Crowe in a more softer, romantic persona.
AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007). A stylish, but not great gangster movie but did include a statement about the complexity of good and evil men (more so than the average cops and robbers movie).

Not Up to My Preference as a Great Movies:

GLADIATOR (2000). Good but over-rated movie. I couldn't get over the fake tiger scene, far below Ripley's standard of excellence.

Haven't seen, can't comment on movies:

THE DUELLIST (1977)
THE LEGEND (1985)
1492 (1992)
WHITE SQUALL (1996)
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (2005)


Overall, I believe that Ridley Scott has a keen eye for set design and dense visual artistic production value and has a body of selected substantive, meaningful work. A director doesn't always have to or want to create mindful movies.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks to tabuno for pointing out Ridley Scott's achievements. He may not be the cinephile's delight, but as a mainstream director he has produced his share of good and some outstanding and memorable work. I hated BLACK HAWK DOWN, it deeply depressed me in the grim aftermath of the Gulf War when harsh criticisms of American militarism were needed rather than simply a crackerjack war movie, but it was nonetheless brilliantly made BLADE RUNNER is on anther level; it's Scott's real cult classic, which will stand the test of time. ALIEN is strong stuff, the cornerstone of a memorable pop franchise (I admire James Cameron's ALIENS very much too.) THELMA AND LOUISE is another classic of a pop kind that's going to last. MATCHSTICK MEN is very interesting. KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, though poorly received, is a beautiful looking film. There's usually something of more than passing interest to be offered by anything Scott does. I think A GOOD YEAR is a clinker, but I have not watched all of it. Thanks, tabuno--that was a needed corrective.

I thought the film was mediocre, but I didn't think I was trying to be harsh. . .Come to think of it, maybe I am being harsh.

Yes, you were being harsh. To say that AMERICAN GANGSTER is "mediocre" is not only harsh, it is inaccurate. AMERICAN GANGSTER is another crackerjack mainstream movie from Scott. It's disappointing, because it isn't the great epic some might have hoped for, and its intermingling of ultra-violence and the exploitation of one's own beleaguered community with a celebration of capitalist bootstrapping and "family values" is troubling and strange. Many if not most of your statements about the film, bix171, were accurate, yet you failed to coordinate your descriptions with your assessments, which is essential in a review, if it's to make sense. Whether Scott is "smart" is another matter. He could be a great filmmaker and still hold odious views.