American Gangster = American Hero

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2017)

Pros: Interesting story and strong performance by Denzel. Cons: Predictable. A few directing and acting flaws.
In the tradition of Blow (2001), here is a real American Hero...
America has been glorifying gangsters way before hip hop and gangster rap, way before television "The Sopranos" (1999), hit movies Scarface (1983) and Goodfellas (1990). Guns and seemingly limitless funds (read "fun") were an end and a mean (by a mean I refer to both the demeanor and misdemeanor, and I mean by any means necessary) before the Godfather (1972) et al. had every prototypical Italian American and his neighbour imitate Brando, Pacino, De Niro or Pesci ad nauseum and quote lines of gangster movies like people used to quote Shakespeare. The American Dream, before "American Idol " (2002) produced prefab Pop Stars, was of an entrepreneurial spirit realistically closer to the original spirits-bootlegging Scarface than say an arguably antisocial, enigmatic, Bill Gates. America's gun culture endures. Thus the title of the movie alone, alas, says a lot about the American subconscious.
This may even go beyond the United States boundaries as Hollywood and U.S. influence on the world culture is still very powerful--in Japan, you have the Yakuzas From Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to American Gangster (2007), movies about money and violence has been very popular. For example, there is a clear preponderance of high ratings for such movies in the Internal Movie Database – IMDb, the most popular movie website in America and on the planet. At the time of this original article (Nov 2007), four out of the five overall best- rated movies in the TOP 250 out of hundreds of thousands are of that kind!
In this rendition of the gangster movie genre which focuses on a clever, ruthless 'black man' in Harlem's 1960s who builds a drug empire, the glorifying is not overt, yet it is not really made in a way that you will realistically root for the "good cop" instead of the "bad a*s villain". The movie has depth in content in that it deals with connected racial tension and government involvement in corruption and drug trafficking. A big angle to the tale is that bypassing regular drug channel and getting the product straight from the source in Far-East Asia with the help of the US Army in Vietnam, this 'black man' or nig*r (America's subclass or worse than nothing) was able to overshadow even the Italian Mafia's chokehold on organized crime, which unsettled more than a few people from both sides of the law. Also, the systematic corruption in New York law-enforcement agencies that permitted the fight on drug trafficking to be very lax as well as these state employees actually profiting from this decadence in the streets, was brought to light and to life quite vividly.
In this picture, Denzel dazzles and is a great villain in his portrayal of Frank Lucas, although not to the degree of his Oscar- worthy Training Day (2001) performance. He gets a chance to shine occasionally and more so towards the end, but the script and directing did not allow him to show his full arsenal on celluloid. Russell Crowe plays a cop again (L.A. Confidential, 1997) and is as subdued as his character. What I did not like is that the subplot of his personal life, although maybe interesting on paper and a worthy contrast to add complexity and not fall into black-and-white territory, did not really work and detracted instead of enhanced the picture. These were the only parts that really felt long and underused out of the otherwise well-paced 157 minutes. Carla Gugino did not really hit the mark as the wife, but it seemed to me that it was more of a storytelling mishap out of Ridley Scott's directing. He should have handled it differently to have a better impact or not use it at all and maybe spend more time on Frank Lucas' personal or "professional" life.
Besides this little lack of character development that can be seen for pretty much most of the characters, the film is a good story, well told and well placed into the context of the time and place of the narrative. The conclusion wraps everything up nicely. Thank you, come again.