Even In the Drug Trade, Ethics, Stereotypes and Practices Can Run You Out of Business

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2008)

American Gangster is an enormous entertainment, one of the contemporary gangster epics, and a terrific one-year-later follow-up to the 2006 mob opus The Departed. However, it's tough to give this movie the ceiling rating I badly want to give it, the 10 I tend to give the American gangster film, which generally gives me some of the most thrilling satisfaction I ever get from film, because Ridley Scott's adaptation of Frank Lucas's life is softened around the edges by purely Hollywood production values. The film is not shot with a particularly expansive creative eye but rather with the coverage-themed American studio approach and an intermittent amount of very standard character looks. Nevertheless, American Gangster is still cracklingly pleasurable.
It is blessed with a wonderful soundtrack, as has come to be a compulsion in the gangster genre. The film is rich with that heaving funk energy of its late '60s, '70s era. Sam & Dave, The Staple Singers, and Bobby Womack blare exciting classics that pump the movie's spirit, and Anthony Hamilton, in a lusciously visceral nightclub scene, sings a wonderful song masterfully fashioned to adapt to the film's period.
Also, Denzel Washington, whose presence drives nearly the entire movie, finds an infinite amount of comfort in a role that just may be a niche for him. Firstly, he's very becoming. It's not long before we're lost in the world of cold, ingeniously pragmatic, Frank Lucas, a multi- faceted man beyond the limitations of such an impersonal demeanor. Secondly, Washington is pleasing to watch. It's just a joy, as it tends to be with villains, to be in his subjectively honorable and increasingly unaligned company.
Russell Crowe, in more of a supporting role than opposite, does not stand out as he did, again so pleasingly, as the villain in 3:10 To Yuma, however beyond the standardization of his hero character, a disheveled, unorthodox, womanizing cop, there is a very amiable person that he fleshes out. There is one particular scene that I love for its implicit theme: While the rest of Detective Richie Roberts's (Crowe) clan of undercover street cops are watching a boxing match, Roberts, despite sitting amongst them, has his mind somewhere else and to me somehow seems more refreshingly individual than the rest of them. What makes Roberts the irregular hero that at least nearly matches the presence of the villain is his offbeat style of everything. No matter how many corny Hollywood good guy scenes he's given early in the film, the character shines through.
Really, most of American Gangster's minor faults, such as Carla Gugino's character, the wife of Crowe who criticizes him passionately for being too wrapped up in his work, are protected by the fact that it's a true story.
The movie may ride roughshod over many spots Ridley would've benefited from more carefully constructing, but inscrutable are its starpower, gritty twilight scenes of New York and New Jersey, vast scope, and tremendous climax, a razor-sharp heartpounder of violence, quick cuts, and drama which makes you feel like leaping out of your seat to applaud. Predominantly, there is an undeniably savory taste left in one's mouth, especially after the powerful final shot.