'Gangster' is no 'Scarface'

Rating: 4/10 (23 December 2007)

After watching the real Frank Lucas being interviewed on BET, I couldn't believe that Denzel Washington was cast as him. Denzel unfortunately is no Laurence Olivier and is unable to play anyone other than Denzel Washington. As others have pointed out, it's particularly difficult for him to play bad guy parts. There's no range or nuance in his performance to the point that he could have been playing any other gangster. The real Frank Lucas is a very unique character and Denzel virtually made no attempt to show any of this guy's idiosyncrasies. The writers do a poor job in fleshing out the Frank Lucas character as Denzel has little to do in his interactions with the other characters (Lucas's wife is the worst written part--her biggest scene is ducking a bullet meant for Frank toward the end of the movie).
The story takes a very long time to get going and probably a half hour could have been cut from the beginning. The transition from Lucas going from small time protégé of Bumpy Johnson to big-time drug dealer is not very convincing. Other scenes seem completely over the top (for example, when Frank shoots a rival on the street to impress his family members and then calmly comes back and joins them to finish his meal. Have you ever heard of a murderer who doesn't want to get caught remain near the scene of the crime?)
While the director attempts to show in part that Lucas's actions had very negative consequences for his community, the victims are shown at a distance in a docudrama style. In fact, the film would have been better made as a docudrama for the History Channel than a feature film.
Russell Crowe does a serviceable job as the beleaguered detective (and later prosecuting attorney) who tracks down Lucas. But he's basically reprising his hard-edged detective part form L.A. Confidential. I read an article that the detective/prosecutor played by Crowe had a much lesser role in taking down Lucas in real life. One gets the feeling about American Gangster that the screenwriter only was able to collect the basic facts surrounding the life of Frank Lucas and virtually had little knowledge of Lucas's family members, criminal associates and opponents. Hence, the most fleshed out characters are the detective, his family and fellow cops as opposed to the people we would like to know more about (such as Nicky Barnes, etc.). The screenwriter ends up padding the script with some long drawn out chase scenes to make the film more dramatic. But at its core, there are few interesting revelations here aside from the surface facts of Lucas's story found on TV and in magazines. I would rather watch Al Pacino in the sensationalist "Scarface" which was far more entertaining than the plodding 'Gangster' which never rises to the grandeur it aspires to.