I recently saw the first half* of American Gangster. And it’s very good. Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas ion probably his best role in years, although Russell Crowe is only alright as cop Richie Roberts. Washington, in fact, pretty much rules the day as the intelligent, intense lord of the street. In fact, he kinda is a little too intense. You start to like him, although this may be because everyone else in the movie is more corrupt and evil than he is (frightening thought). The movie evokes the contemporary world of the late 60’s early 70’s well, as well as having an appropraite hard edge when required.
Crowe’s role is a little bit troubled form what I saw because there’s very little interesting about the character. A bit of stereotype, he’s so married to his job and his honesty that he screws up his own marriage. He’s also not nearly as honorable in his personal life as he is on the job. The movie doesn’t focus much on him and the sections involving him are less interesting than the urbane but brutal Frank Lucas. Frank Lucas is actually more honest than Richie ROberts and more honorbale than the other police of gangsters. He’s a drug-peddling smuggler, but he’s pretty upfront about his life and takes care of his family. He does delve into brutality when people make mistakes, but the movie implies that he doesn’t normally kill except for traitors. And in the crime-ridden world he inhabits, is he even the villain? Or just a normal man?
Due to having two tests the next day, I wound up leaving at about the 1:30 mark. Can’t tell you how things turn out.
Metacritic has it at 80 and Rotten Tomatoes at 82.
I’d say it’s on the top of my list for Friday’s openings, except another little old crime movie is opening with even higher marks (87 on MC, 86 on RT).
We just got home from seeing it; I really, really enjoyed this film. I tend to agree with the OP that Russell Crowe’s character wasn’t nearly as interesting as Denzel’s, but I don’t think that his parts detracted from the movie at all. smiling bandit, do yourself a favor and go back and see the rest of it.
Of course, the highlight of the film, for me, took place in the audience. I was sitting next to an elderly couple who were commenting to each other out loud about certain aspects of the film. Not really loudly, but enough that I could hear them (and chuckle a bit after getting over my initial annoyance). Well, during the scene where Denzel’s character is showing his mother and family the house he got them (no spoiler here since it’s in the previews), the woman of the couple said to her husband, “Look – all those black people!” It didn’t sound malicious at all; it just sounded like she’d never seen so many black people on the screen at once!
As one of “those black people” myself, I have to say I was struck with a case of the church giggles for a while after that.
I felt that the film started weakly, but grew tighter as it went along. There were some glaring, “What the fuck are you thinking?” continuity errors in the film, however.
No spoilers in my descriptions. The first one I noticed is in one scene when Russel Crowe and his partner are getting out of their car. Behind them, to the left, (and not tucked in the far background) is a 1972 Buick! The scene must take place no later than the beginning of 1970, and the Buick in that shot was not built in that bodystyle until 1972! Here’s a similar model Buick. The one in the film was brown and I believe it had a black vinyl top.
Later on, Denzel Washington is sitting in a bar, watching TV and he gets up to make a phone call to his cousin because of what he sees on TV. As he walks past the window of the bar, you can see a black, late model Japanese car driving past.
Finally, in another scene, when they’re sitting in a cafe and looking out the window at some parked cars, the black one, with the curved rear tail light is clearlynot from that time period.
It was an okay film, overall, IMHO, and I think that with some editing to trim things out of it in the beginning, it would have been a much better film. Crowe did an okay job, but Washington was clearly more on his game than Crowe, and a couple of times Crowe’s accent came through.
There must be something in the water at that film…it was the first time in years my SO and I had to move our seats in the theater.
Behind us were four idiots. The film started and five minutes later one voice:
“What is the name of this film?”
“American Gangster” the other says.
“Who is in it?” another asks.
“Denzel Washington.”
Five minute pause.
“Is the film only about needles?”
“I think it is about drugs.”
Two minutes later.
“You said it was a film about the mafia. Why are they all black?”
“It stars Denzel Washington. I guess he wanted blacks to be in the film.”
We got up and moved down a few rows. It was probably better than my first reaction of wanting to stand up and pour my huge Diet Coke on their heads and then beating them to death for being stupid.
I thought the film was very good. Denzel and Russell (even though I am not a fan of Mr. Crowe) did a fine job and the story kept us interested the entire time. Still, if you wait until it comes out on DVD, that would be OK too.
I thought that the movie was very good as well. My only problem was that it all ended rather quickly, making it seem like turning in all the cops really just wouldn’t matter one way or the other to Frank at that point. So while still an impressive event, I didn’t get a “trying to correct the error of his ways” sense.
I thought it was excellent. Kinda liberal with the truth (my understanding is that Lucas was paying a street tax to several of the NY mafia families and really wasn’t as powerful as they made him out to be. This maybe because they are basing this on Lucas’ own bio which seems to give him more power than he really had).
The scenes with Crowe bored me whereas Washington dominated the screen.
Yeah, but we’re not talking about a film by somebody just out of film school here, we’re talking about Ridley Freakin’ Scott, a man who’s highly dedicated to his craft. It’d be like one of us frequently misspelling Cecil’s name. I mean, they got the phone cords right in the film, which is usually the one thing that everybody misses. Hell, even the beer cans were period correct! And that, is apparently a bitch to do, because it’s so rarely done.
Close to a minute. I can understand how they missed it, as I didn’t think anything about the car driving past at first, because the body style is so common. It was when it was just about to disappear from view that I realized, Hey! Wait a minute! That car shouldn’t exist for another 20 years!
That particular style didn’t show up on cars until the late 1980s at the earliest. I’m thinking that the car is a mid-90s (or thereabouts) Impala SS.
I thought it was an excellent movie. But IAAL who is unfamiliar with the facts of this case, but
Did Richie really act as the prosecutor against Frank, as well as the investigating and arresting officer? I doubt that very much. I also think it would be against the attorney code of ethics for Richie to later become Frank’s defense attorney.
If those things happened in real life, then I stand corrected.
I’m not a car guy so I didn’t notice the continuity errors about the cars, but as a baseball fan I did notice:
At the time Frank supposedly got his nephew a tryout with Billy Martin, manager of the Yankees (circa 1971), Billy was actually the manager of Detroit Tigers
I was disappointed. It was a straight-up genre film i.e. usual mold of characters & (too) conventional narrative.
There was no meat in the investigation side of the story i.e.
Crowe only pays attention to Lucas because of the circumstances of his appearance at the boxing event, and later on makes him the chief focus only due to his friend spilling the beans
I was also surprised at how the breakthrough happened…
i.e. the brother strapping the tape recorder. Why couldn’t he agree to snitch but then tell Lucas about it who would then take care of the LEO or supply them with small fries every now or then. That tactic was mentioned earlier in the movie. Make it look like the brother’s not really in the loop. As it stands, it was too convenient.
One last thing
The end titles mention that Frank Lucas was sentenced to 70 years but released after 15 years in 1991. As per Wikipedia, he was released in 1981, but arrested again on drug charges in 1984, and spent 7 years in jail for that Also, Roberts and Lucas are now close friends in real life and the former’s the godfather of the latter’s kid
I just got back from the movie and I have to say that I generally enjoyed it. It’s not nearly as meaty as most of the previous gangster flicks and the real life vs. Hollywood questions nagged at me as I watched it (not knowing anything about the source material).
Denzel is turning into the black Al Pacino at this point. He’s starting to play the same character in just about every movie these days and is practically playing a parody of himself. That said, he’s damn enjoyable to watch anyways. The guy just devours the screen, and this is a good character for him to do it with.
Russell Crowe does a solid job of playing the downtrodden tough guy, as he always does. As other’s have noted his character isn’t that dynamic but it didn’t really need to be. Assuming that the character follows reasonably close to real life it probably shouldn’t be seen as a shortcoming of the film.
Good movie, nothing Oscar-worthy, but very enjoyable and managed to keep a fairly brisk pace while fully developing its characters. There isn’t a ton of action in the role and keeping a almost 3 hour movie interesting is no small feat. The payoff at the end is a bit anti-climactic, but that’s to be expected when telling a story based on a true story.
I saw this recently. Good stuff. I really like it.
I agree with much of the discussion. Especially the confusion of Crowe as the prosecutor. As a lawyer, that really took me out of the moment.
Of course, it was a way to get Crowe and Denzel into a scene together (they had ZERO interaction until that point).
Either way, I was entertained and the three hours flew by. This is a good one, maybe worthy of a best picture nod, but does not invite a favorable comparison to last year’s gangster flick, The Departed.
One scene that I loved, and I might start a thread on the subject, came out of nowhere.
Frank’s mother is portrayed as a simple, doting mother the whole film. But in the end, when Frank is wanting to kill Barbra Streisand’s step son, she delivers a performance with such power that it caught me completly off guard. That scene was brilliant and the actress should be very proud of her work. Her emotions started slowly, began to simmer, and then exploded. Great freaking scene. It really reflect the nature of old Southern women. They acted simple and naive, because it was expected, but underneath they knew what was happening.
Like just about every other Ridley Scott film, nothing particularly special. Top-tier talent, of course, and extensive resources at his disposal, but Bigger very rarely means Better, and while it’s fine for what it is, it’s still disappointing that I can think of 10 much better crime films this year that didn’t come close to racking up what this did at the B.O. its opening weekend.
Ruby Dee’s terrific, though, and it’d be nice to see her finally grab an Oscar nod.
Any chance you could list them? I love crime films, but haven’t done much moviegoing this year. Thanks!
As for the movie, I thought the redemption of Frank Lucas at the end was a little too pat and done far too quickly. There’s a good exchange between Washington and Crowe, a 30 second montage, and suddenly they’re friends? The too-honest-for-his-own-good cop is best buds with the lighting-a-motherfucker-on-fire-in-the-first-scene gangster? Sorry, not buying it. (I know it happened in real life, but from the movie, I didn’t see why it would have ever happened.)
Also, the stuff with Crowe’s custody of his kid should have been dropped. They only spent five minutes on it, and if you’re not going to do something right, why do it at all?
That said, Denzel was amazing, as always. Not surprising, as he’s played the ultra-competent character with the same manner of speaking – you know, kind of know-it-all, kind of smartassy, a little aggressive – at least a dozen times now. I thought Crowe was just fine, too. Not a bad movie, but I can’t imagine people talking about it at all in two years.
I agree with this 100%. I’ll be impressed with Denzel not for playing against type and being the bad guy, but rather playing against type and being a dumb guy.
