Solid entertainment

Rating: 9/10 (16 March 2008)

Ridley Scott's American Gangster is not only a hard-hitting exposé of a Harlem crime lord who outwitted the Mafia and gained control of the drug trade, but a revelation of the unholy alliance that existed between drug traffickers, corrupt police officers, and big business elites in New York during the late 1960s. Denzel Washington is Frank Lucas, a heroin dealer and organized crime boss who made millions selling drugs on the streets of New York. Successful in minimizing the power of Italian distributors who controlled Harlem by eliminating the middleman and buying heroin directly from a Southeast Asian source, Lucas' operation was, in the words of Sterling Johnson, a narcotics prosecutor in New York, "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever." Frank began his career as the associate of Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson (Clarence Williams III), one of the leading figures in organized crime in the early 20th century and an enforcer who protected the Harlem interests of the Italian Mafia. As the film opens, Bumpy and Lucas enter a discount appliance store where Bumpy tells Frank of his dismay at the disappearance in America of "pride of ownership", "personal service", and the loss of the middle man in the sales process. After Bumpy's sudden death, Lucas attempts to build his own operation and undercut the Mafia's monopoly on the drug business by going directly to the source.
Traveling to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, Lucas concludes an exclusive arrangement to obtain 100 percent pure heroin which he sells on the streets as "Blue Magic", only 10 percent pure. Lucas operates under the radar, smuggling the dope into the States on military planes and bringing family members such as Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) from North Carolina to set up storefront businesses scattered throughout the New York/New Jersey area that serve as distribution centers. A determined enforcer, he is also seen as a suave businessman making arrangements with Mafia bosses and confronting his rival Nicky Barnes (Cuba Gooding, Jr.,) about infringement of his trademark use of the name Blue Magic.
In a superb performance as the opportunistic crime lord, Washington projects a low-profile surface veneer of sophistication that covers up an explosive brutality. He refuses to dress ostentatiously, goes to church every Sunday with his mother (Ruby Dee) and is generous to his Puerto Rican wife Eva (Lymari Nadal) but will turn on a family member instantly if his security is jeopardized in any way. Lucas has no problem dealing with New York's anti-drug Special Investigations Unit, paying off the majority of its members, in particular Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin). What he doesn't count on, however, is an honest cop like detective Richie Roberts played by the outstanding Russell Crowe. Roberts, whose personal life borders on chaos, has become an outcast in his own department after turning in a million dollars in cash that he found in the trunk of a car because it was "the right thing to do".
The relationship between Roberts and Lucas is the highlight of the film and their face to face "negotiation" near the end of the film is reminiscent of the meeting between De Niro and Pacino in Michael Mann's Heat. American Gangster is solid entertainment that is primarily a character study of two men on opposite sides who are determined to put their lives together, one to the benefit of society, the other to its detriment.
The strongest aspect of the film, however, is its courage in exposing the web of corruption that existed in the police force at the time. In one scene, Roberts tells his fellow officers about how hard it is for him to gain cooperation from federal agencies. "I don't think they want this to stop", he says. "Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians, they stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job." In a trenchant commentary on the values in society, by 1977, 52 out of 70 officers who worked in the Special Investigations Unit were either in jail or under indictment."