American Gangster
DIR: Ridley Scott • WRI: Steven Zaillian • PROD: Ridley Scott & Brian Grazer • DOP: Harris Savides • ED: Pietro Scalia • DES: Arthur Max • CAST: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin, Ted Levine, Armand Assante, John Ortiz, Carla Gugino, RZA, John Hawkes, Ruby Dee

On paper, American Gangster has all the makings of a modern classic. Consider the following – one of modern cinema’s great directors, who, a few missteps aside, is in the middle of a terrific silver age, two of Hollywood’s most respected and popular stars facing off against each other, and a genuinely interesting true story featuring sex, drugs, and violence, adapted by a screenwriter who has produced work for Spielberg, Scorsese, and De Palma. Not to mention a lengthy period (seven years) spent in development, long enough to suggest that there was something genuinely special about the project to warrant having so much time and money thrown at it.

And yet, the most extraordinary thing you can say about American Gangster is that it gives Cuba Gooding Jr. his first decent role since he won an Oscar over a decade ago. This isn’t to say it’s a bad film. Just about everything about the film is perfectly adequate – far better than adequate, in fact. The acting, screenplay, and cinematography are all strong, while the whole film is kept ticking along nicely by its certainly qualified director. It’s just that, given the amount of talent involved, it’s hard not to feel like it should have been so much more.

Ridley Scott’s film opens with a bang. ’60s New York drug kingpin ‘Bumpy’ Johnson murders someone in cold blood, as his driver and right hand man Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) looks on, emotionlessly. After Bumpy dies of a heart attack (right in the middle of a speech lamenting the loss of good ol’ fashioned American values, no less) Lucas swiftly takes the reins of his business. However, Lucas reinvents the trade by buying heroin direct from Asia instead of a watered-down second-hand product from the Mafia and corrupt cops. Lucas’s success is founded on selling a product (labelled ‘Blue Magic’) that’s better quality than the competition, and half the price. It’s certainly an admirable business model, except for the whole, you know, heroin aspect, and it very quickly makes him a millionaire. And on top of it all, he’s a gentleman, a family man, and a devout Christian.

The personal life of Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), on the other hand, is a shambles. Locked in bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, Roberts is a womanizer who practices double standards between home and the workplace – he’s a terrible father but a good cop (to a fault, quickly earning himself a label as a ‘boy scout’ among his peers after he finds $1 million in cash and turns it in). Roberts is assigned to the head of a drugs taskforce, and he eventually follows the trail of Blue Magic right up to Lucas.

Covering several years and cutting between Lucas’s rise to the top and Roberts’s attempts to take him down, the film draws interesting parallels between the two characters, playing out like Michael Mann’s Heat, only with drug dealers rather than bank robbers. Like that film, the leads only share a couple of scenes, but both are good enough on their own to keep your attention. Crowe in particular deserves plaudits for a thankless, humourless role that lacks the grandstanding ‘Look at me!’ moments one might expect from an Oscar frontrunner. Denzel Washington meanwhile, gives a trademark Denzel Washington performance – complex, dignified, perfectly balancing the restrained moments and angry moments the character demands. They’re both backed by a terrific support cast – particularly Josh Brolin’s corrupt cop (a far cry from The Goonies all those years ago) and Sin City’s Carla Gugino as Crowe’s long suffering wife (Gugino deserves extra credit given that the court sequences are scripted like deleted scenes from Kramer vs. Kramer). Meanwhile, Scott and cinematographer Harris Savides paint a picture of New York that is neither glamorous metropolis nor grimy urban hellhole. The Christmas scenes in particular are a far cry from the picture-postcard city presented to us by countless seasonal romcoms, yet fall short of the grimy decadence of, say, Taxi Driver. However, bar the film’s explosive climax, Scott’s usually impeccable visual sense feels neutered for most of the film. Perhaps it’s because we’ve seen the shooting style he opts for here it so many times before (part Paul Greengrass shaky cam, part icy Michael Mann blues and greys) that it fails to impress.

The film’s moral compass, too, seems a little off. Crowe’s character raises an interesting point halfway through the film – If someday, the war on drugs was won, what would happen to those who make a living from fighting it? He says in one scene: ‘Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. They stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job.’ It’s a fascinating idea, and one worth exploring. Unfortunately, though, Scott would rather indulge us in the excesses of the drug business – we’re treated to the image of dozens of naked women cutting drugs to a groovy ’70s soundtrack, and numerous scenes of Washington buying expensive things. That the film shows the benefits of Lucas’s questionable career choice is to be expected, but Lucas is almost portrayed as a role model (there are sequences in which he’s good to his mother, he gives out bread to the slums of Harlem, and is just generally an all-round nice guy), while Roberts is given the kind of treatment usually reserved for the ‘troubled kid’ in US teen movies. This is at best naïve, and at worst hugely irresponsible. To be fair, Scott does show brief glimpses of the misery caused by Lucas’s product, but they are easily overshadowed by the portrait of him as an American hero. Just as irony-free hip hop stars idolise Brian de Palma’s Scarface, some poor misguided souls will see American Gangster as a perfectly good way to live. For all his attractive qualities, the fact remains that Lucas was cold, ruthless killer who made millions from the suffering of others. To treat him otherwise is especially ludicrous given the tough line the film takes on police corruption (Brolin’s character is simply pure evil, even performing that most heinous cinematic act – murdering a helpless dog).

Though never boring – no mean feat considering its 157 minute run time – American Gangster never feels exceptional. Maybe it’s because so many interesting story opportunities are hinted at and then wasted (a written pre-credits coda reveals a further fascinating twist in the tale that could have made for some great drama). Or maybe it’s the fact that for all the big-name talent involved, there are no truly cinematic moments that stand out above anything in the likes of TV dramas The Sopranos or The Wire. Either way, for all its various strengths, Gangster never equals the sum of its remarkable parts, and what should one of the year’s great films is instead simply a good one.

Scott Townsend
(Read biog here)

Rated 16 (see IFCO website for details)
American Gangster is released on 16th November 2007
American Gangster – Official website