American Gangster

“There are two sides to the American dream.” That is the tagline of quite possibly one of the best movies dealing with gangsters/mob type characters since Godfater/Goodfellas. Not that there aren’t other good movies of the same genre out there, but honestly if you think anything is better than those 2 movies in that category then you might want to throw yourself off of a nearby cliff. With that said, American Gangster tells a story set in the 1970s of an American, yes that’s right … AMERICAN…not Italian or what have you of the cliche’ that is mobster/gangster, but an American Gangster Frank Lucas.

(THIS IS A REQUESTED REVIEW)

While I don’t see Frank Lucas so much as a gangster per say, but more of a drug lord that wants nothing to do with his actual product, his actions and demeanor definitely put him up on the scales of being a gangster. I mean if going down the street outside of the little diner that you just ate some bacon at, pulling out your Colt .45 and blasting the guy that snuffed you the other day in the face doesn’t classify you as a gangster … then by god what does?!

PROS of the FILM
When I start to think of how to write all the positives about this film that you probably don’t already know, ie: the great acting, the set design, lighting and overall theme of the movie … I’m somewhat left with only the negatives to write about. Though for the sake of this being a review that I’ve promised to write something about then I shall do just that.

Let’s start off with everyone’s favorite award winning black american actor Denzel Washington. Don’t act like you don’t know who he is – and don’t say that you won’t be impressed by what he can bring to the table, because you’re wrong. He is a tremendous actor and actually plays the part very well. So well in fact that you end up liking the bad guy of the movie. Wait a tic, is that possible?! The audience actually leaves the film somewhat sympathizing for the overall villain of the plot? What exactly are we watching? I thought he was a gangster … oh that’s right he is! He royally F’s up anyone who says no to him and has his sh!t in gear when he starts planning on bringing drugs in the US and really start to make the dough. Frank Lucas is in fact a real American living with us today and his character (from watching special features on tv etc.) is so well played by Denzel, you would think that they might have been from the same womb at one point or another. But let me just say that I’m going to stop there for sake of keeping this review short. (enter sarcastic “heh” here)

Also, I don’t want this to go unsaid, but Russel Crowe, the arrogant asshole that he is, did once again bring a great presence to the screen and was terrific as the counterpart to Denzel in this film. I hate to say that because I find that I really dislike Russel Crowe to the point that if he were to get gouged by some impaling factor while surfing on the shores of New Zealand I would probably care less … and maybe even smile.

There are other great factors of this movie that should be mentioned. Such as, the directing, cinematography, and many other things that I just don’t have time to write about.

CONS of the FILM
Well there isn’t much that I can say that is bad about this movie. If you wanted me to come up with something just for the sake of completing a full review, ok fine – I’ll dig up some dirt.

I think that this movie went a little long and it seemed a bit repetitive…and by that I mean that we see Frank Lucas becoming the new “boss” and the cop going after every known criminal he can think of except for the correct one. We’re also shown Frank becoming the “drug lord” and going to get the drugs and dispursing them amongst the public and making tons of dough from it. All this happens over and over again like we are dumb sheep being fed the same ol grain and being pounded in the head that this is what the plot is and this is what happened. I GET IT! I didn’t need to see the same family strife amongst one another more than once, I didn’t need to see Frank go get drugs and get his peeps do do something with it more than once, and I didn’t need to see the poor cop struggling over and over again to find his gangster. It just seemed like the director dragged out the plot in order to fill up a 3 hr. time slot for a movie. I bet if you took a lot of the fluff out of the film you’d have a good hour and a half of great stuff! (this is in no way to discredit the movie because regardless of this – I didn’t notice the length at any point in time.)

Oh, and why would you use Common and T.I. in a film like this? … they stuck out tremendously and not in a good way.

Ah, and one other thing – just because I’m good at what I do … things are never explained – but rather rushed in order to rush the movie along for it’s repeating plot ideas. Things such as Frank explaining what his brothers need to do with the drugs, how the cops get around … or what the other cops do with their time (we normally only see Russle’s character doing anything … and then the other cops come in with info from doing some bust at some point in the film that we were not aloud to see … fishy eh?)

SUMMARY
Ok, seriously…overall this film was good. It wasn’t great but that’s probably because I’m comparing it to great films such as the Godfather and Goodfellas. Not that it doesn’t do a good job at standing out, because it most certainly did. If you are a fan of this type of genre and are able to sit through a good length film while not being explained much to get from point A of the story to point B – then by all means check it out!

Now, where’s my gun I need to cap someone.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

~ by phoenixwave on February 7, 2008.