Frank's Stupidity Was His Worst Enemy

Rating: 10/10 (7 April 2008)

I thought the movie was very entertaining and I purchased the DVD for my collection. A couple of things struck me as odd to the point that I researched them after watching the movie to see if they were true. Frank Lucas has been built up as a criminal genius, when in fact, he was done in by his own stupidity. For example: 1. Frank stumbled upon the idea of cutting out the middleman and offering a product that was twice as good as the competition at half the price. He quickly amassed a fortune in excess of 250 million dollars, 200 million of which was in real estate holdings. A really smart guy would have parlayed his criminal earnings into legitimate businesses. Why continue to risk your life and freedom selling dope when you have a fortune in the hundreds of millions? In Frank's case, selling dope was the only way he knew how to make real money. He did own some legitimate businesses, but they were just fronts for heroin distribution. He really had no idea of how to run a legitimate business and how to turn an honest dollar. He also could have sold some of his real estate, invested the money, and lived very comfortably off his interest earnings. However, Frank didn't trust many people, and I assume that his mistrust also included investment advisers. When Frank got out of prison the first time, after serving a 5 year term, he went right back to doing the only thing he knew how to do well: selling heroin. Frank's wife and some of his friends and business associates urged him to get out and quit while he was ahead, but he wouldn't listen.
2. It was unbelievable that the cops were able to walk right up to Frank's heroin manufacturing center in the projects. C'mon, no lookouts? No kind of advance warning system? No heavily armed gang to protect his multi-million dollar manufacturing operation? That's crazy. How in the hell could a large group of mostly white guys so much as set foot in a Harlem housing project without setting off a chain reaction of early warnings? Even more significant than the threat of a police raid, Frank should have been concerned about his manufacturing center being raided, robbed, or destroyed by a rival drug gang and planned accordingly.
Criminal mastermind/genius? Nah...just a lucky one trick pony who didn't have sense enough to quit while he was ahead.