Whether it’s the next great American crime movie or simply this year’s professional stunner will be determined over the next few months. For now, it’s enough to say that the story of the rise and fall of an African American drug kingpin is relentlessly told by the English director Ridley Scott (”Gladiator,” “Black Hawk Down”); it just keeps on coming.
Starring Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas, a beneath-the-radar Harlem heroin impresario who puts together an astonishing organization before anyone notices, and Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, the Jersey detective who tracks him, the movie has the aspirations of a crime-and-punishment epic, a superb feel for time and milieu and an almost subliminal feel for myth.
“Is this the end of Rico?” “I ain’t so tough.” “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” These iconic lines are from the tradition in which “American Gangster” hopes to find its way. “Either you’re somebody or you ain’t nobody” seems to be the line it dreams will live forever.
The movie begins by evoking the classic old gangster Bumpy Johnson (dead-eyed Clarence Williams III), the numbers king of Harlem who outlived Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano and by the mid-60s was the criminal Yoda of the rough terrain above 125th Street, a bitter old cynic who complained to his driver about the profligacy and the lack of dignity and self-discipline of today’s generation of criminals. His driver, just up from North Carolina, was Frank Lucas, and he listened hard and well. When his turn came, he insisted that his organization’s minions be low-key, steely-eyed, well-dressed, un-flamboyant. They may have carried .45s but they dressed Brooks Brothers. Frank himself could shoot a competitor in the head, then cross the street and eat breakfast, confident that his sedate coat and tie would shield him from the attention of police investigators who hassled guys with bling around their necks.
Tags: actor, American Gangster, denzel washington, gangsta, movie, Movies, myspace
