American Gangster: Don, Corporate Style

A strong contender for best picture both for the upcoming Golden Globe awards as well as the Oscars. I highly recommend it, writes Aniruddha Basu

American Gangster (2007) - Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, photo courtesy: IMDb

Hollywood is pretty much a factory when it comes to making Gangster epics. Think, The Godfather movies, Scarface, Goodfellas, The Departed…and the list of memorable gangster movies goes on and on. American Gangster is firmly rooted in the tradition of making the “don” smooth, stylish and larger than life. I do not know how charismatic mafia kingpins are in real life (I haven’t met any, fortunately). But if one were to go by Hollywood films alone, then being a don is a dream career.

The title “gangster” of the movie actually resembles more a successful corporate bigshot, than any member of the mafia. Played by Denzel Washington, and based on true events, the “gangster” Frank Lucas ends up doing something almost unthinkable in the mafia underworld of the early 1970s. He travels all the way to Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam war, meets up with a drug kingpin there, and manages to import a potent, 100 percent “Blue Magic” into the United States. He sells higher quality narcotics at a much cheaper price to his “customers” easily beating any competition he would have faced from other mafia families (especially the Italians).

As essayed by Washington, Frank Lucas is a man who conceals his astronomical fortune in a smooth and routine lifestyle. He does shock the audience every now and then by committing some decidedly cold-blooded deeds, but on the whole he is more like a gentleman-CEO. He gets up early, reads the business paper, meets his accountant for lunch, and employs members of his immediate family in his enterprise. And yes, he does meet a beautiful Porto Rican, woos her by taking her to meet his mother (whom incidentally he takes to Church every Sunday) and even manages to keep most of the cops happy by paying a hefty commission.

Not all the cops are happy however. Two cops, one good and one bad, both want Lucas’ empire to crumble, for very different reasons. The bad cop is a corrupt goon whom Lucas instead of sending a fat paycheck on Thanksgiving, couriers a Turkey instead!

The good cop Ritchie Roberts (played by Russell Crowe) is as interesting a character as Lucas. He too does something unthinkable. He turns in one million dollars of loose cash after finding it in some thug’s car, instead of pocketing it himself or sharing it with his partners. In an age when police corruption was the norm, Ritchie Roberts’ action is taken very, very badly by his colleagues. He is silently jeered at, and openly ostracized by the entire police force (even his bosses look at him with blatant disbelief).

He is eventually assigned to crack down on the drug trade. Slowly, he realizes that the most powerful druglord is not an Italian or Sicilian. He is an African American named Frank Lucas. Exposing him is very difficult, as Lucas leads a sophisticated and sedate lifestyle. However once Roberts realizes that Lucas was importing the drugs in the coffins of the Vietnam War martyrs, the cop has a case in his hands.

The climax does not have the obligatory shootout, but has Washington and Crowe sitting face to face, two intelligent and very different men, aware of the stakes. Their conversation is almost like a business transaction. (Why should Lucas supply any information? What do the cops have to offer in return?) Ultimately, cop and gangster join hands for a much larger purpose. To expose corruption inside the police force, that ultimately leads to a huge purging within the force.

In employing two excellent actors, Director Ridley Scott definitely made his job easier. He let Washington and Crowe play out against each other, and instead concentrates on smart, crispy dialogues and minute period details that give the movie an authentic feel, in addition to recalling such greats as The Godfather and The Untouchables.

But in the Final Analysis is Frank Lucas as memorable a cinematic don as say Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone, or Marlon Brando’s Don Vito? Perhaps not, since the movie is not completely about him, as it devotes a substantial amount of time to develop Russell Crowe’s character as a foil to Frank Lucas. Also, being a “black godfather” is not really shocking to today’s viewers, but the movie seems to make a point of it. But that was the 1970s and things were very different then, as the underworld was monopolized by a coterie of powerful Sicilians.

Even leaving aside the racial aspects, Lucas is an intriguing character, whose actions while being ethically suspect, are completely rooted in cold, impersonal, corporate logic. A strong contender for best picture both for the upcoming Golden Globe awards as well as the Oscars. I highly recommend it.

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