American Gangster Review

There are no new tricks in American Gangster. It's an old fashioned sort of cops and crime movie that tells the story of the rise of a crime boss concurrently with that of the lawman who is determined to arrest him. Hollywood has been making gangster movies with similar plots since the early 1930s. It's just a good story well told, and there's a lot to like in that.

Denzel Washington portrays real criminal Frank Lucas, former driver for Harlem crime lord Ellesworth "Bumpy" Johnson (Clarence Williams III). When his mentor dies in 1968, Lucas sees Harlem plummet into chaos, as greedy criminals fight to divide up the territory.

Making a bold move, Lucas seeks to restore order through simple business concepts. By buying heroin direct from Viet Nam, using a corrupt network of military personnel to import the drug, Lucas is able to undercut and take over every competitor, even marketing his illegal wares with the brand name "Blue Magic."

Washington plays Lucas as a man who sees himself as an admirable figure, viewing the cold blooded murders he commits to be necessities of the business. He dresses well, and hates the pimp fashions of his contemporaries. On the other side of the coin is heroic New York cop Richie Roberts, played by Russell Crowe as a scruffy loner with an intense work ethic. Soon after Roberts is introduced, we see him discover a cache of nearly a million dollars in the trunk of a suspect's car. His decision to turn in the cash as evidence makes him a pariah in his own department, as none of the crooked cops wants to work with a guy they know will turn them in.

Roberts has enough trouble in his life. His ex-wife (Carla Gugino) is fighting with him in court over visitation rights to their son, and he has a full plate balancing his job and night school law courses. But his reputation for honesty pays off when the federal government offers him a job as head of a narcotics squad. Roberts makes his team's top priority tracking down the mysterious underworld figure who has taken over the heroin trade.

At more than two and a half hours, American Gangster is a crime tale of epic length, but director Ridley Scott keeps things so interesting along the way that the film flies by. The characters are interesting, and details of the plot are provided in a natural way. Scott revs up the excitement with a thrilling action sequence at the climax. But one of the film's strengths is its sense of time and place. It feels like events are occurring naturally in the late 1960s and early 1970s, without making a big deal out of it. The typical tome-setting pieces are thrown in - a television broadcast showing Nixon making a speech; a soundtrack that makes heavy use of vintage hit songs; news reports tracking the war in Viet Nam - but outside of this window dressing we get a sense of the era because the characters live in it so believably.