“American Gangster”Universal PicturesDirected by Ridley ScottWritten by Steven Zaillian
Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Lymari Nadal, Ted Levine, Carla Gugino, RZA, John Hawkes and Common
Rated R/157 minutesOpens Nov. 2, 2007Three out of four stars
Admittedly, the bar has been raised unreasonably high. The Great American crime epic has become one of our best and most popular art forms. From the small-scale Jimmy Cagney or Edward G. Robinson B-movies of the ’30s and ’40s to the expansive, multi-layered sagas perfected by “Goodfellas,” “Once Upon a Time in America,” “Pulp Fiction” and the “The Godfather” films, standards for the genre have become impossibly high.
The bar has been raised even higher by “The Sopranos” and “The Wire,” which over the course of 13 episodes each season have the ability to go deeper than their film counterparts.
Gangster films are our modern-day Shakespearean tragedies, epic poems, cultural myths. They are open-wounded critiques of the American dream, often rags-to-riches stories with insulated American neighborhoods, streets and ghettos as the battleground. Community, family, loyalty, betrayal, corruption, downfall — the same recurring themes can serve a variety of story and character arcs.
You can’t really hold “American Gangster” — the latest entry in the crime sub-genre — up to the impossible standards set by Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and David Chase. That being said, it’s clear that director Ridley Scott has his own high expectations. With its extended running time, superstar cast and heightened level of social relevance, “American Gangster” is clearly swinging for the fences. That Scott only comes up with a standup double is a testament to his ambition more than anything else. You can’t really do a movie like this on a small scale anymore, and Scott — fresh off the completely unambitious “A Good Year” — has his sights set high. “American Gangster” falls somewhat short not because so many of its predecessors are better, but because the film is trying — perhaps too hard — to achieve that same level of greatness.
“American Gangster” runs along the same lines as Brian De Palma’s hopelessly overrated “Scarface” and Ted Demme’s “Blow.” As the latter, it’s based on the true story of a rising star in the drug trafficking business and his eventual downfall. Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) rises from small-time status to become the kingpin of Harlem. By importing pure, uncut heroin directly from Bangkok, Thailand, he ends up at the top of the entire New York drug trade in the early 1970s — his own business trumping even that of the powerful and established Italian crime families.
His situation is so unique and unprecedented that the cops who are tracking down the big players in the drug business have no idea who they’re after until they’re right on his tail. The main guy behind the special unit is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), your garden-variety, conflicted workaholic cop who will stop at nothing, yadda yadda yadda. (Thankfully, Crowe is such an exceptional actor that the character never comes across as a cliché.)
Police corruption serves as an interesting counterpoint, underscoring the circular nature of crime and justice — the way the system reinforces socioeconomic conditions and crime cycles, as criminals are created almost as a necessity.
Prior to its rushed conclusion, there are sequences of greatness in “American Gangster.” It is well-acted and well-made, but it lacks both the urgency and the personality that may have made it a truly great crime epic. Of course, when you’re standing next to some of the best movies ever made, it’s easy to fall short.
Then again, that’s the choice the filmmakers made.