American Gangster
2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin, Ted Levine, Armand Assante, John Ortiz, John Hawkes, RZA
Rated R
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Available Feb. 19, 2008

“More important than any one man’s life is order.” — Dominic Cattano (Armand Assante)

Maintaining law and order has been important from the beginning of time. However, when breaking the law and disrupting order becomes suitable and degrees of acceptability erupt, a truly tragic figure blossoms — Frank Lucas. Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) is a paradox. He is sensitive yet violent, he has ethics but is immoral, and completely composed yet explosively volatile. It is Frank Lucas’s oppositional code of life which led him to control the heroin drug kingdom from the late 1960s to early 1970s. With his new, almost 100% pure product and his structured drug council, Frank Lucas took the illicitness and covertness of drug trafficking to a new level.

In the beginning of this movie we meet Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson (Clarence Williams III). Frank and Bumpy’s relationship was not only one of driver and passenger, or instructor and protégé, but also of father and son. Bumpy taught Frank the ins and outs of the drug business, how to cut down those who are a detriment to the business, how to align oneself with the powerhouses that will help your business and most importantly in their illegal enterprise “no one is in charge.” Bumpy taught Frank well, but, he I am sure, never realized Frank had the strength and fortitude to take his mantra and debunk it. Frank wanted to be in charge and he made sure he was. By going straight to Bangkok and cutting out the middle man, Frank created a drug world that was reliant upon him. He controlled the input of drugs and partnered with other drug kingpins to factor the output of product.

Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), one of the few honest police officers in New Jersey, came upon Frank Lucas by mistake. Selected to head the special investigation team that would go after the “˜big kahunas’ in organized drug crime, Richie began his investigation tumultuously. With no leads and no list of main characters, Richie was forced to trash any intelligence he had and start from the bottom up. There was a new product and there were new players, but who were they and how did they get so far so quickly? With a lot of leg work, run-ins with the crooked New York police department, and one of the biggest boxing matches in American history, Richie met his alter ego Frank. In the biggest instances of our lives there are significant moments. These turning points dictate where we will go in the future. The turning point for Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts was a chinchilla hat and coat, and great seats to the Ali versus Frazier boxing match. When Richie decided to stake out the historic match that took place at Madison Square Garden, he had a game plan in mind. He would take pictures of the mafia heads that the police had intelligence on and see who they were talking with. But, when Richie sees Frank and begins totaling his actions and people extolling him, he knows immediately he is a big player. Frank’s seats were in front of the Don’s, Muhammed Ali and Joe Louis stopped and shook his hand, and he constantly spoke to Dominic Castano, and Dominic listened.

The downfall of Frank was due to the nefarious coat and seats, but it was Richie’s strategic police work that spearheaded his demise. Richie found the snitch that would turn on Frank, he followed Frank and witnessed the corrupt police force rolling Frank (for us who do not know what this term is, it is the theft of money or goods from a criminal by another criminal — it can also mean being pick-pocketed on mass transit), and he led the prosecutor’s office (with his newly acquired law degree) in building and executing their case against Frank, his family, and the corrupt police force.

This 2-disc collection, includes the theatrical version of the film, as well as the unrated extended edition, which has subtle differences from its theatrical counterpart. The biggest difference was the ending of the movie. For fear of being a spoiler, I won’t give away the exact details, but rest assured, Frank still snitches and there are over 120 convictions because of his whistle blowing and he still does jail time.

I enjoyed this movie, which was based on true events, and while I didn’t love it, I did respect it for the artists’ performance and the thorough direction and production work put into it. Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington gave excellent performances. I liked Denzel’s portrayal of Frank Lucas and was drawn into his magnetism. To be a drug kingpin, I am sure one must have a personality which appeals to many, is feared by all, and respected by few. Denzel did just that — Frank appealed to me, I feared his next action, and I disrespected his choices. Ok, side note: I respected a black man ascending the ranks in a position (even though it was illegal), but I disrespected his choice of position. A better question would be: was there another choice for a man that was psychologically stunted by the brutal murder of his 12-year-old cousin before his eyes, or the lack of educational opportunities surrounding him, or even the lack of opportunities for blacks at that time on a whole?

Russell Crowe did an awesome job with Richie Roberts. I could not see another actor playing this part and being as convincing as he. Richie Roberts’s story in itself is something that Hollywood and the American movie audience love. An honest police officer who goes against the grain to maintain his integrity who goes to law school at night to keep our streets clean would be the tagline for the life of Richie Roberts. Russell actually made me believe he would turn the money in. (I know many of us while watching this scene said “˜I would be on the next plane out of dodge.’). Also, I absolutely love when an actor with an accent ditches it for a role. I humor in catching lines where his accent is particularly apparent. Russell only flubbed 6 times that I counted (I’ll admit I stopped counting for most of the movie and just enjoyed watching).

In closing I apologize to you dear readers for beginning this review as an essay. But, I am not too sorry for my choice. The life of Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts should read as a commentary on the socio-economic structure of the Eastern metropolises of the 1960s and 1970s. It should be an analysis of what was wrong with our country (of course the Vietnam war being a part of it) and how two men handled what was wrong and tried to better it. So forgive me if I went a bit off in the beginning of the review. My last note is: the theme song “Do You Feel Me” by Anthony Hamilton, like many things in this film, is stupendous. If you didn’t hear it, you really need to download it from iTunes, get the movie soundtrack, and as much as I am against pirating and think it just WRONG, at least listen to it on one of those horrible little illegal sites (I’m not saying steal it by downloading it for free, but I’m saying listen to it via some method, and I am sure you will fall in love with it).

DVD Bonus Features

Deleted Scenes:

There are two deleted scenes — one is an “Alternate Opening” and the other is “Frank and Eva’s Wedding.” I love deleted scenes (as I am sure I have said before), but these deleted scenes did not make any sense to me. Deleted scenes should do something positive for the movie, they should show a reason — positive or negative — that something was cut from the film. These two scenes just seemed erroneous. They were not necessary at all in the movie, and they were so miniscule they should not have even made it to the DVD and published to us as a bonus feature.

Fallen Empire: Making American Gangster

This bonus has five scenes that discuss various tenets that came into play in the making of this movie.

“Tru Blu: The Real Story” tells of the social and political makeup of America at the time which set the stage for the large influx of drugs, the relationship between the police force and the Lucas crime syndicate, the manufacturing of illegal drugs, and the relationship between Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts. This bonus feature is jam-packed with great commentary and background.

“Killer Threads: Costumes” relates the relationship between costume and character. Period piece attire was very important in portraying the grit and grim of the 1960s and 1970s so Janty Yates, the costume designer, created classic vintage looks for every lead and extra. Frank Lucas’s costume played a huge impact in the movie as one ensemble he wore to a boxing fight led to his ultimate downfall. In that instance, he no longer wore the understated, yet perfectly tailored outfits of usual, but sported a $25,000 chinchilla coat and $10,000 matching hat.

“Crime War: Production” conveys the production aspect of the movie. Brian Grazer (producer) and Ridley Scott (director) explain how the major characters were asked to join the project, locations were scouted, the script was storyboarded, and working out the production logistics of the numerous sets.

“Into the Arena: Ali Vs. Frazier” is a pinnacle moment in the movement of the movie. The fight between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier was recreated in Madison Square Garden with over 1,000 extras dressed in period clothing. Celebrity lookalike for Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Joe Louis appear in this scene along with the son of the actual referee that refereed the fight in 1971.

“Rhythm of the Street: Sound, Music and Editing” — This feature talks about the importance of the music, the editing of music for specific scenes, and the impact music has for character and plot development. The most interesting point of this scene is that music for this movie was memorable and important for two major reasons. The first is the music supervisor, Kathy Nelson, made it a personal mission to find “secret gems” of period music that represented the decade successfully, but had not been oversaturated in other films. The second is music producer Hank Shocklee was charged with creating a song for Frank Lucas that encompassed his life from 1969 to 1973 by using music from that era, but authoring new source music specifically for the movie.

Case Files

“Script Meeting” — In this snippet, queries on specific lines of the script are brought up, motivations are discussed, and suggestions for keeping the line as is or possibly editing are made.

“Heroin Test Show and Tell” — In this snippet, the director learns how to test heroin technically, so the scenes in the movie with drugs are true to life. I always thought being director would be interesting and that random bits of information would be necessary to know, but how many people get to say “I learned that there are no tests to find out the percentage of purity in cocaine, but the test finds out the percentage of impurities.”

“Setting Up the Takedown” references exactly what the scene is about. The filming surrounding the point when one of Frank Barnes’ “hot houses” are raided and a member of his syndicate captured is displayed.

Widget

Check out the features included in this widget, which has three exclusive clips from the film.