November 1, 2007

American Gangster (R)
Denzel Washington picks out his Oscar tuxedo and prepares his speech after turning in a firecracker performance as Frank Lucas, the real-life criminal mogul, in American Gangster.

Oh, hey, Russell Crowe, he’s also in the movie. How about that. It’s easy to forget he’s part of the story — or even part of the scene — when Washington is on screen. Remember Training Day, when Washington seemed so tickled to be playing such a magnetic bad guy that you kind of suspected he might be giggling and pinching himself between takes? Frank Lucas is no scenery-chewer (though he does deliver the “they tried to kill my wife” line with intensity that even The Godfather, Part II-era Al Pacino would be jealous of) but he seems to be just as much fun for Washington. Maybe even megawatt stars dream of playing Soprano for a day.

As the movie tells it, Frank Lucas (Washington) is the driver for a neighborhood criminal boss in Harlem, soaking up lessons about how to gain and hold power. When his boss dies, Frank decides to give himself a promotion and takes his saved-up money to Southeast Asia to buy some heroin, which he daringly ships home via Army transports between Vietnam and the states. After he sets up a supply line, he returns to New York to set up a sales operation that involves brand fidelity (he requires a certain quality for drugs sold with his brand names), employee discipline and neutralizing the competition either by co-opting them or by, uhm, other means. And, in this time and this place, some of those business rivals include the local police detectives who confiscate drugs and then sell them back at a reduced purity and greater cost.

Enter Richie Roberts (Crowe). Like Serpico, Roberts is clean — too clean. Other cops of the era don’t trust detectives who don’t skim cash or shake down criminals, we learn. Such a cop might turn in his fellow cops, Roberts’ partner tells him. Early in the movie, we see Roberts hand over a suitcase full of money to the evidence room, much to the obvious disapproval of the other men at the station. It is portrayed as the death of chances of finding buddies in the precinct. But it makes him an appealing candidate for the government’s increasingly aggressive drug-battling squad. Working from his home base in New Jersey, Roberts eventually gets Lucas in his sights but must cooperate with the not-so-clean New York City detectives to chase him down.

Both Roberts and Lucas are shown as extraordinary men — Roberts is single-minded in his dedication to catching criminals (in early scenes, we see his less than perfect family man skills) and Lucas is not just ambitious but breathtakingly smart. He might be building a fortune for himself and his family, but he takes pains to do it with a quiet, Warren Buffet-y modesty. One of his biggest mistakes, as the movie shows it, is a rare moment of flashiness. His wife gives him an expensive coat to wear to a boxing match and it creates way too much attention. Lucas later burns the coat, watching with an “I knew better” angry grimace. Son of a poor family in North Carolina, Lucas, in different circumstances, could have been a fortune-making CEO. Which I guess he was to some extent.

In both cases, the men try to succeed in ways almost unheard of in a culture working overtime to keep them down. It’s hard not to admire both of them — even though Lucas’ product is a destroyer of lives. It’s the few glimpses of this fact that help us root for Crowe’s Roberts even when Washington’s Lucas is so much more electrifying.

American Gangster has had me jazzed since I first saw its trailer, and the full-length feature didn’t disappoint — strong performances, smart dialogue with a smirky sense of humor, and a fast-paced procedural (even at nearly three hours). It’s perfect for all those fans of The Wire desperate for the jaded comparisons between cops and criminals, criminals and business men. A-

Rated R for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality. Directed by Ridley Scott and written by Steven Zaillian (from an article by Mark Jacobson), American Gangster is two hours and 37 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Pictures Distribution. It will open in wide release on Friday, Nov. 2.