And Crowe also adds some good subtlety to the piece, a flawed man with his family and someone who tries to keep his morality straight (the million dollars given in to the station) amidst total bully-crooks like Josh Brolin's "special" detective. He makes it so much his role that you can't imagine anyone else going down a Harlem street shooting a guy point blank in the head. Washington goes even deeper into the role of the villain than he did in Training Day- he plays him as classic family man, cold businessman, and charming man-of-the-community. And like Heat, Scott gets a lot of mileage from his star power. So there's a lot of story to explore, and Scott makes it one of the most invigorating, nostalgic (ironically speaking) New York crime films in years, as far as the storytelling goes. Lucas didn't get out like Henry Hill, but a good man all the same? Probably not (he ended up in jail again, as the film doesn't point out). But the side that one saw in Serpico is amplified here- it becomes all the more engrossing to see how the crooked cops and "honest" gangster Lucas were linked together, which also leads to an ending that amps up the interest. Then through this there's a whole other level to American Gangster Scott and Zaillian could have made it simply a saga of betrayals and investigation via Richie Roberts.
In fact, Scarface has got nothing on Frank Lucas when it comes to moral complexity: here's a man who did rise up out of poverty, learned the stakes of gang life as a driver for the Harlem boss for fifteen years, and then after he died cut out the middle-man as an importer of the freshest product of heroin right out of Vietnam. Even more than the Departed, one sees as the film goes on an environment of paradox: Frank Lucas was a low-life, a killer, a ruthless thug, and at the same time found time to take his mother to church every Sunday and gave out turkeys to folks in the neighborhood while providing them enough dope to die off in the process. Here Scott and screenwriter Steve Zaillian, without calling attention to it ala Paul Haggis, have made a film about class issues underneath the typical gangster-movie form. Reviewed by Quinoa1984 9 / 10 a big, intense American crime movie, led by stars and director in top formĪmerican Gangster seems on the surface to be what has been dubbed by some critics as "the black Scarface." As Ridley Scott's new film details, this isn't really the case aside from the point of 'rose up from nothing became something through crime', which could be said about almost every gangster film including the Godfather. It is also the story of a dedicated and honest policeman, Richie Roberts, who heads up a joint narcotics task force with the Federal government. His alliance with the New York Mafia ensures his position.
As a result, his product is superior to what is currently available on the street and his prices are lower. He does so by buying heroin directly from the source in South East Asia and he comes up with a unique way of importing the drugs into the United States. Following the death of his employer and mentor, Bumpy Johnson, Frank Lucas establishes himself as the number one importer of heroin in the Harlem district of Manhattan.