Moral, fair, educating, intelligent and entertaining - all at the same time!

Rating: 8/10 (7 October 2008)

An enterprising black drug criminal and a whiter-than-white cop go head-to-head from the late 60's onwards.
Life writes the best jokes and the best drama, so the lucky authors are simply those that write them down on paper first. If WE are lucky they are the great writers themselves and can frame the story in the best possible way. American Gangster falls short of being an all-time classic, but is clever enough to have studied (and learnt) from a wide range of movies from The French Connection through Serpico through to the quality TV of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. It also borrows from a few failed movies like New Jack City.
It says in the bible that in the world of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Frank Lucas (Densil Washington) wasn't that smart, but he was smarter than those around him. Rather like Al Capone. If you listen hard enough to this production you can see he doesn't even follow his own limited advice! (I always judge criminals by their skill at staying out of prison - so Lucas can't really score very highly on my own Richter Scale.)
Richie Robers (Russell Crowe, who you may be interested to know has a mother-in-law local to me and sometimes visits) is not a great all-round actor because he isn't that smart as a person (you can't play smart unless you really are smart - Brando's problem). He is best playing pig-head and obstinate working class types with a sense of fair play. So well done the casting department.
Washington is the kind of actor that probably can't walk past a mirror and not look at himself. He refuses to wear the afro of that the real Frank Lucas sported and wants to be Joe Cool at any point when his life isn't endangered. Densil doesn't do sweaty or jerky anyway. In truth, he is getting a bit samey.
The problem with movies is momentum and falling in to the trap of simply repeating yourself. Easy traps to fall in to when real life (which this is - in outline form) does the same. When this is good it is top class - when it sags (which it does at various points) it comes across like above average TV drama. Equally it can't walk away from cheap thrills and the blindingly obvious. I don't like being in the company of professional lookers of the other way. However saintly they are framed - they are freeloaders of the first order. Pimps of scum rather than plain scum.
Moral issues are dealt with fairly and - to be frank - in an arbitrary manner. Thrown in from nowhere and going nowhere. Long shot of dead junkie and crying child from the book of movie cliché. Praise director Ridley Scott for including them (didn't have to), but about ten seconds thought has gone in to it.
If I'd have written the piece I would have gone more for the early years - learning the biz on the knee of the famous (original black gangster) Bumpy Johnson. Indeed this point (suggested as fact in this movie) may not have been the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
At the end I counted myself as very well entertained and curious enough to read more about the real people on the screen. The only downside is that Cuba Gooding Junior proves that unless he has a good script he just fades in to the wallpaper like an extra. No star charisma at all.