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Movie Review - American Gangster (2007)
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(What this rating means)
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| Director: |
Ridley Scott |
| Starring: |
Josh Brolin, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, and Chiwetel Ejiofor |
| Rated: |
R (for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality) |
| Length: |
157 minutes |
| Genre: |
Crime/Drama |
| Tagline: |
None. |
| Studio: |
Universal |
| Website: |
American Gangster |
| Release: |
Bro'vember 2, 2007 |
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PLOT
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After 15 years of serving as gangster Bumpy Johnson's driver, body guard, and collector, Frank Lucas (Washington) is ready to take over, but he's not interested in doing business as
usual. Bumpy, he says, didn't actually own his business. He merely managed a white man's business. Lucas has no plans to give up 20% of his profits just so he can "be allowed" to
work on somebody else's turf.
One day while watching the news he discovers that there's big money to be made in the heroin trade, so he starts smuggling the drug into the country in the coffins of
soldiers returning from the Vietnam War. Selling stuff that's twice as good for half as much as the competition can lead to quite the lucrative profit, and Detective Richie Roberts (Crowe)
is determined to find out who is behind the drug empire and bring him down.
Meanwhile, crooked cop Detective Trupo (the inimitable Josh Brolin) struts around in a sweet white pimp suit, kickin' leather jacket, and a mustache that would make Tom Selleck
jealous and proceeds to be the biggest bad a of them all. Gangsters of American proportions ensue.
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JOHNNY'S TAKE
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Director Ridley Scott. Academy Award Winner Russell Crowe. Academy Award Winner Denzel Washington. Future Academy Award Winner Josh Brolin. Gangsters. Corruption. Quite the
impressive list of ingredients, wouldn't you agree? Mix them all together and American Gangster is a well-told, well-acted, smoothly-paced true story about one man's
unscrupulous rise to power and a selectively scrupulous man's attempts to bring him down.
But as much as I enjoyed the film, is it the homerun for which I was longing? No, it isn't, and it all has to do with personal taste and expectations. My style of crime drama
is Heat and L.A. Confidential, so I must admit I hoped for an amalgamation of the two. I wanted the Russian-roulette-gun-in-the-mouth Crowe from L.A.
Confidential, but instead we get a more weathered Russell who is saddled with personal issues and hypocritical ethics. He's not given the opportunity to bust heads and
kick posteriors like we've seen him do in the past.
As for Washington, he does bust loose on a few guys and isn't scared to shoot somebody in broad daylight on the street, but if you're looking for a villainous portrayal along
the lines of Alonzo Harris then you'll have to settle for renting Training Day again. Perhaps the real Frank Lucas was subdued, but you almost get the sense that
Scott is holding back, choosing to portray Lucas in a softer light than he deserves. Therein lies another problem. The guy was responsible for thousands of deaths and
innumerable destroyed families, and while this is touched on during one of the film's many musical montages, the character gets treated with kid gloves. Some audience
members walked away from the screening in support of the guy. NO! THIS IS NOT A GOOD GUY! This is an interesting case study; not a celebration of his rise to his
so-called "success."
Without question, Josh Brolin steals the show. The Bro' squared off face-to-face with two Oscar winners and owned them in every scene they shared. He held up his pimp
hand and quickly introduced it. He's smug, nasty, and matter-of-fact, and he revels in every second of it. Brother just wanted a cut, and Denzel should've known better than to be
struttin' around in a $50,000 chinchilla coat without so much as buying him a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, he's not given the screentime he deserved.
He fills the screen with foreboding menace every time he arrives, and there is a projected sense of dread that he just might lose it at any second and really
cause somebody to bleed. Scott should have given him the opportunity to dig deeper. Rather than just serving as an occasional threat, he should've been allowed to really
go for the jugular. Is one or two major beatdowns on some punks who weren't giving him his cut too much to ask?
The ending is a bit anticlimactic as well. I envisioned the fate of Brolin's Detective Trupo involving a spectacular car or foot chase and ending in a bang. In
instances like this, the movie is too subtle when I felt it should really push it. I think the main problem is that the film has three of my favorite working actors,
so I had already envisioned several spectacularly awesome scenarios. Smackdowns, beatdowns, chases, shootouts, fisticuffs, you name it. To be fair, I must say it would
have been impossible to live up to the ideal I'd mentally created.
I should warn you that the film runs 158 minutes, and the average moviegoer is going to feel it. I was never bored, but I could have been given a little more excitement.
The way I can tell a movie contains extraneous fat is when I can pick out the parts I'll fast-forward through during a DVD viewing. Sure, I'll most likely be moving
straight to Brolin's scenes, but still. The bust scene near the end is a blast, both figuratively and literally, and spectacularly thrilling. Add a couple of more scenes
like that, trim about 20 - 30 minutes (seriously, what was the point of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s cameo), including a '70s music montage or two, let Crowe explore his
inner "Bud White" again, give Brolin more screentime and more posterior to kick, and let Denzel simmer with just a tad more intensity, and we'd be talking about an instant
classic, a five mark film for sure.
As it is, American Gangster is a very good movie that's more interesting than it is exciting, more compelling than it is captivating, and more likely to elicit
a one-time watch than it is to encourage multiple viewings. Without Brolin, this would've been a 3.5 mark movie, but his presence boosts it to a four - solid by today's
standards, but man, it's hard not to think about the things that could've been done to push this to a full five marks.
I have a feeling that overall opinions of the film will be divided along age lines, but there's one thing on which everybody walking out of the theater will be able to agree -
the Bro' Rocks the 'Mo! If Josh doesn't get a Best Supporting Actor nod, then his mustache better not get robbed as well.
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ODDS & ENDS
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- Lucas amassed a fortune calculated in the tens of millions.
- Awesome called Josh Brolin to tell him it wants its mustache back.
- First attached to the project was director Antoine Fuqua, who had directed Denzel Washington in his 2001 Oscar-winning portrayal of corrupt LAPD narcotics officer
Alonzo Harris in Training Day.
- Washington, initially resistant to portray a man whose complex rise to power meant the death of so many, was captivated by the script and came aboard for the lead role.
- To prepare for the role, Washington acknowledges that he, "got in a room with Frank, turned on the recorder and talked with him. I didn't try to imitate him,
necessarily, but Frank's such a charmer; that's key to his character. I played Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter and did the same thing with him - just hung out with him, got him
alone and got the truth - or, hopefully, got some version of it. But with Frank, I said, 'Don't tell me anything I don't need to know. I don't want to have to testify.'"
- "In those days, as the story is told, heroin was sold for $50,000 to $60,000 a kilo at 50 percent, 60 percent purity," Washington comments. "Frank found it
100-percent pure for $4200 a kilo and sold it on the street at a higher purity and lower price than his competition. You can do the math. He made an incredible
amount of money, at one point claiming about a million dollars a day himself."
- Another thorn in Lucas' (and ultimately Roberts') side is the on-the-take NYPD detective Trupo, played by Josh Brolin. The Ridley Scott-termed "bada** cop" will let
anyone sell drugs on his streets, as long as they give him a hefty kickback. Brolin was curious to examine the mind of this "criminal with a badge" who personified the police
corruption of the day. To inform his character, he recalled a conversation with a seasoned police officer who candidly told him, "All you had to tell a drug dealer was,
'All I have to do is shoot you, put the gun in your hand, and I'm gonna get a medal. That's it. It's that simple.' Back then, there weren't a lot of drug dealers or gangsters
who killed cops, that was just off-limits; you didn't do it."
- For the real Frank Lucas, filming in Harlem was a revisit to his days of glory - though not all his old neighbors were ready to give him a hero's welcome. On set nearly
every day Washington worked, Lucas sat in his wheelchair, surrounded by his immediate family, and reminisced. "Yeah, he looks like Babyface [one of the NYPD's not-so-finest],
right down to the leather coat," Lucas acknowledged while pointing at Josh Brolin in character. "He even got that walk down, and they got him driving that Shelby car like he
did."
- Filming in the midst of the 100-degree-plus summer left at least one member of the cast feeling slightly less nostalgic. "Trying to run up and down stairs in '70s-cut
Levis in a New York heat wave," Crowe says, shaking his head. "I ran 54 steps up and 54 down and another 75 up again, one day. After 10 flights, your jeans are completely
wet, and they're so tight that they cut off your circulation."
- Josh Brolin is in No Country for Old Men with Tommy Lee Jones who was in In the Valley of Elah with Josh Brolin who was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon.
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MAMA'S APPROVAL
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Mothers, children, and Sunday School classes might want to stay away.
Violence - The bulk consists of a big shootout and some random acts of Denzel Washington being brutal upside people's heads.
Pervasive drug content - We see quite a few usages of drugs, including some close-ups of people injecting needles into their veins. It ain't pretty.
Language - Much droppage of "f" bombs and other profanities that fragile ears don't need to hear.
Nudity and sexuality - Frank Lucas insists that the women preparing his drugs work naked so they can't steal anything. Therefore, there are quite a few shots of
naked girls in his drug factory. There's also a scene involving Crowe having sex with his lawyer, and another one of him in bed with another floozy who isn't his
wife.
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TRAILER COMPARISON
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It may lead you to believe that it's more action-packed than it actually is. Otherwise, it's a good representation of what to expect. Just add 156 minutes.
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THE GIST
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American Gangster is a well-told, well-acted, smoothly-paced true story that doesn't quite enthrall to the magnitude I was hoping nor excite with the
flamboyance I was expecting, but it's still a very good movie that's worth a watch. You'll walk away with a better understanding of why I have been touting
Brolin all these years.
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