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It was Denzel who made a big fuss to the producers that he didn't care  to  glorify Frank Lucas, the real-life heroin dealer he portrays here. Somebody's big fuss got ignored. Big time. "American Gangster" opens with Denzel  lighting a swearing Puerto Rican guy (we won't ever find out who the hell  this guy is, by the way) on fire and then pumping a few rounds into him.  Black screen, annnd... title. You can almost hear the kids cheering, even if  there are none in the theater.

This is already a Hollywood feature film budgeted  rap video, only it's about to be two-hours plus and set to late-60's-to-mid-70's  tunes. We start with Denzel's Lucas as a plain badass and watch him continue to  be a total badass all the way through. Never do we even hear of one shitty childhood thing that may have shaped his hardass outlook on gittin' paid, not 
givin' a fuuuk, and bla bla bla until he brings one memory up in a conversation near the end of the story. What we get walked through is the same step-by-step "rise to power" montage (that isn't really a montage) we've already seen in "Scarface," "New Jack City," and whatever other drug dealer flick you wanna name, only this one is based on a real guy, and the whole "downfall" bit is basically ignored. What we see is that crime pays, big time, as long as you're smart about it, and that drug dealers are people too.

Some heavy shit  happens, but hey, those are just the things that make you more OG when  you tell the kids to not be like you when they grow up. We see how  Lucas gets to buy his mom a big house, pick out a nice trophy wife, and  shoot guys in public without any consequence. We don't see how the "better  product" of heroin he sold in Harlem during his reign killed hundreds just by  being too pure compared to what they were used to. In fact, the only OD we see  (in the only scene that has a random junkie customer doing what they do) is from  the heroin that's been screwed with by Nicky Barnes, a fellow dealer of  Lucas' time and area portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr., because the Frank Lucas  we know and love only sells good heroin that nobody onscreen suffers from.  Scenes like the one where Lucas' young nephew tells him he wants to abandon his  dream of professional baseball to end up like his uncle are supposed to be  disturbing, but there is no evidence in this flick that it's that bad of a  life at all.

Again, it plays out as if it supports the gangsta rap bullshit that  glorifies a young black man blaming a life of murder on Whitey  while living off killing his own people because, hey, life on the  streets is tough, G. Corrupt white cops are given the focus as the real bad guys  here, and the fact that Lucas was above the mafia (white guys) is given more  focus than the fact that, uh, the mafia isn't really the pride of the white  race. Instead of Denzel's alleged hope to maybe show that what Lucas did was  LOWER than what the mafia was doing... Christ, never mind. It's kinda like if a  black racist group became more powerful than the KKK -- is doing what the KKK  does better than the KKK cool? I guess so by some's standards, as it seems that  Lucas being better at keeping people (most of whom were black, as he worked out  of Harlem) on heroin than his white competitors were is shown here to make us  root for him over that darn mafia bunch.

In the end, Lucas wore a snitch jacket  to get out of doing life in prison, but the flick shows how he helped to bring  the evil white cops and criminals down without showing us a shred of  how he brought down plenty of blacks as well -- he wasn't a crusader, he was a  snitch, but you won't know that from watching "American Gangster."

Maybe some  lame dickhead butt-raped this whole thing in the editing room, because the film  even includes Lucas saying at his dinner table how important family and  remembering where you come from is, but then kinda sorta just skims a thick  surface when it comes to the point in time where he fucked up his family. It's a  long build-up with none too much payoff and a conclusion that feels like  Tom Hanks and Leo's lame little friendship at the end of "Catch Me if You Can"  (also "based on a true story").
 
If not for Russel Crowe's side of the story as Richie Roberts, the  detective who helped to bring down Lucas as a cop and then a prosecutor, one  would feel they've seen this whole movie before (check above-mentioned drug  dealer flicks). Crowe is natural as usual, and the character of Roberts is given  more shades of gray than the "bad guy" who could've been humanized a little more simply by letting him be seen as more of a dick and less of a badass.

Roberts was apparently a womanizer and liar in his personal life, but ethical  in his work to the point where no one in his corrupt department cared to work  with him. Solid enough, but we're still left not feeling all too pumped when he starts to finally make some progress.
 
The film itself is well-directed by Ridley Scott and does at least flow in staying entertaining. Staying true enough to its real-life events, it keeps from  being cheap when it could've been more shocking for popcorn value, but remains  in a forward motion enough to not have anyone checking watches. What's missing  here is a personality though -- this thing takes place in 70's Harlem, which had to be one of the creepiest and tackiest places in recent American history, yet you're never quite feeling the filth of it all like you could in the ironically way more honest "Superfly."

While, granted, "Superfly" was  actually shot there in the actual 70's, something has to be said for the vibe of a "blaxploitation" flick that feels less exploitative than something that cost  this kind of bundle. While the usual period tunes and outfits are present, it's  hard to buy here that we're not really just watching Hollywood people do their  70's-in-Harlem thing.

All that aside, again, it entertains and stays smart  enough to not be a piece of shit. Sadly, it's a fairly good movie that will indeed keep easily-influenced adolescents who buy into whiner  (gangsta) rap thinking that being a badass dealer is cool. The last shot tries  to symbolically show Lucas' solitude, but... yeah, it fails. Ho hum.
 
(three bongs)

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