American Gangster (2007)

	Directed by: Ridley Scott	COUNTRY USA GENRE Crime/Drama NORWEGIAN TITLE American Gangster RUNNING TIME 157 minutes
	Produced by: Brian Grazer Ridley Scott
	Written by: Steven Zaillian

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Frank Lucas	Denzel Washington
Det. Richie Roberts	Russell Crowe	½
Detective Trupo	Josh Brolin
Eva	Lumari Nadal
Det. Lou Toback	Ted Levine	½
Det. Freddie Spearman	John Hawkes	½
Mama Lucas	Ruby Dee
Nicky Barnes	Cuba Gooding Jr.	½
Dominic Cattano	Armand Assante
Moses Jones	RZA
Alphonze Abruzzo	Yul Vazquez
Charlie Williams	Joe Morton
Bumby Johnson	Clarence Williams III

Review

As a portrait of the moods and mechanisms of the big-city mob, American Gangster treads familiar waters. This is one of the reasons why we struggle to maintain interest through every connection and associate of Frank Lucas' in this intriguing and interesting, yet somewhat ill-proportioned film by Ridley Scott. In magnitude and weight, American Gangster is a typical Scott picture, with strong personalities battling it out in cynical environments. The story of Frank Lucas has many interesting aspects, such as the unlikeliness of him building his cartel in the middle of the Sicilian mob's territory, his extremely effective no-nonsense methods, or the fact that he was (arguably) the first black organized crime boss of this magnitude. However, what is not particularly interesting is the man's rather dull personality. The same can largely be said about his adversary, Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), who the film claims was one of the few non-corrupt police officers in New York in the 1970s. One of Ridley Scott's mistakes here is that he dwells too much on various other aspects of his two protagonists' lives, such as the uninspired love story between Lucas and Eva, or the customary "cop has no time for his kid" plot line that I suspect applied to 98% of every divorced cop in the 1970s.

The continuously interesting but rarely remarkable American Gangster does have some powerful sequences scattered around its lengthy running time. One is the technicalities of the narcotics and the smuggling of them, an area in which Lucas diverged from your average dope dealer. Another is the relationship between Lucas and his mother, which is magnificently played by Ruby Dee and culminates in a fantastic scene in which the matriarch feels her son has gone too far. Dee's compelling performance is the film's emotional zenith. There is also quality in the verbal and tactical duelling between Lucas and Roberts towards the end. It shows how two opponents remain utterly professional even after a potentially fatal shootout. Their mutual respect and selfishness reveal how two people operating on different sides of the law aren't necessarily fundamentally that different. What they have in common is that their sympathies for the victims of crime are mainly nominal – both having been hardened by the brutal urban life they are a product of.