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Denzel Washington leads his brothers in a life of crime in American Gangster |
Based on a true story, Scott’s American Gangster is
assembled with Scott’s usual professionalism and assured touch, using top
actors in well-assembled, well-shot scenes. It’s glossy, entertaining and enjoyable.
But it’s not quite inspired or stand-out. Despite everything, it doesn’t really
show us anything new and lacks either the fire of inspiration or the sort of poetry
and energy the likes of Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino or Steve McQueen could
have bought to it. It tells an interesting story, but manages to be pretty much
by the numbers – albeit those numbers are flashed up with as much pizzazz,
drama and entertainment as you could wish.
The most interesting themes are questions of class and
racial politics. The film’s version of Frank Lucas is successful because he
runs his crime empire not like a gang but like a company. He dresses plainly
and simply, so as not to draw attention (unlike the flamboyant criminals played
by Idris Elba and Cuba Gooding Jnr). He talks in terms of supply and demand,
brand loyalty and being a chairman. In one particularly well managed scene, he
pontificates to his brothers on his ideology of business, excuses himself to
walk across the street and shoot a rival in the head, then returns to calmly
finish his breakfast. It’s the ideas of Wall Street applied to gangster crime.
Lucas is all about bringing a smooth, modern, professional thinking to crime –
but with the gun still up his sleeve.
But another reason why Frank Lucas needs to be as
professional as he is, is because he’s loathed by all other parts of the
criminal system. It’s a system that is racist from top-to-bottom, where black
men are unwelcome as anything other than foot-soldiers. The elite criminals –
most of them tracing many generations back to Sicily – smile at Frank for his
money, but never see him as an equal. Even the government can’t begin to
imagine a black man could be running such a huge empire – Robert’s AG boss spews
out a racist diatribe, rubbishing any idea that a black man could achieve
something the Mafia has failed to do. Frank though is just as wary of the
flashy ostentatiousness of most black criminals in New York, telling his
brother that the quietest man in the room is the most powerful.
It’s those brothers who Frank relies on – only family can be
trusted. They’ll also be his Achilles heel. Because even his most competent
brother (played by a sharp Chiwetel Ejiofor) is as much a liability as he is a
good lieutenant. His brothers are innocents turned by their brother into tools
for his crime empire. Frank hands out beatings to cousins who are unreliable.
He’s bitterly disappointed when his nephew chucks in a baseball career because
crime looks more fun. As his mother – an impassioned performance from an
Oscar-nominated Ruby Dee – tells him, the rest of the family looks to him and
follows his lead. There is a clear tension between this family – whose
benefactor is also its corrupter – but it doesn’t quite come into focus.
This is partly because the film is covering a lot, and
partly because it finds itself falling a bit in love with Frank Lucas. Not
surprising when the part is played by Denzel Washington at his most magnetic –
if strangely not quite as energised as you might expect. Washington gives Frank
a dignity and cool that the real Frank – by all accounts a much cruder, ruder,
less able man – never had. The film doesn’t really want to explore the darker
side of Frank. Instead it invites us to sympathise with him, as an outsider
made good. To feel sorry for him when he makes a fatal error (wearing an
ostentatious fur coat to the Ali/Frasier “Fight of the Century” – an act that
blows his carefully preserved anonymity). The film doesn’t want us to feel the
damage of the drugs Frank is pouring into New York, since it might damage our
respect for his triumph against the odds.
The barriers that Frank has to overcome – from arrogant
Mafia kingpins, to local crime lords and corrupt cops (Josh Brolin has fun as a
prowling bullying detective) – are in the end more interesting than the
procedural struggles of Russell Crowe’s Richie Roberts (on solid form). Roberts
is also given a rather cliched (and fictional) custody battle that hardly
justifies its screentime. The cops definitely get the short end of the stick –
and a stronger film might have focused just on Frank Lucas and really explored
the struggles of a black man in white crime world, dealing with racism and
trying to apply Wall Street ideals to street violence.
American Gangster doesn’t quite succeed with its dark
commentary on the American dream – but it’s as entertaining as you could hope
and while it lacks in inspiration, it’s also hard to find too much fault with.
One of Scott’s most solid works, with a charismatic Washington doing decent
work.
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