It’s late 1960s Harlem and when criminal kingpin Bumpy Johnson dies, his driver Frank Lucas steps up to take over his operation. Before long he’s using the American army’s more corruptible elements to import a hundred kilos of pure, uncut heroin from Vietnam.
On the streets, he’s protecting his brand-name smack 'Blue Magic" by crushing the competition and buying off the cops. But one lawman can’t be bought, and that’s New Jersey detective Richie Roberts.
Richie has been treated with suspicion by bent police ever since he found $1 million in drug money and handed it in. But his incorruptibility means Richie is the only man to be trusted with ending the narcotic flood.
What follows is a long, complex police procedural.
When the script by Steve Zaillian is focused on Frank and Richie, and the mechanics of drug-dealing and police work, it’s smart and makes us see that Frank is just one gangster among many in the American system. But as good as the script is, it still marginalises Frank’s family and the black community. It raises more questions than it answers"¦.
Were all of this drug dealer’s brothers happy to fall in behind a murderer? And what did the Black Panthers and other radicals think of a man who poisoned Harlem?
The performances from both Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are Oscar-grade. It’s a true measure of their abilities that these A-listers disappear into their roles.
Washington is ineffably smooth as the criminal overlord who stays below the radar by not flaunting his wealth.
Crowe, meanwhile, is heartfelt as the cop paying a heavy personal price for doing the right thing. The men are two sides of the same coin and the scenes they share are electrifying.
Just as good is Josh Brolin as the dirty New York cop who hates Richie and wants a slice of Frank’s profits.
Ridley Scott is renowned as a visual stylist and this is a good-looking film that invokes grimy 1970s New York. But I felt the film’s dark, blue-tinged first half was just too murky.
The jaw-dropping ending leaves so many questions that I wished the middle section of this long movie had been compressed to leave time to fully explore what happened to Frank and Richie.
American Gangster is uneven, but it’s also often brilliant in places. It’s worth the price of admission alone for seeing two very fine actors go head to head in a most unexpected fashion.
As a film that invokes classic 1970s filmmaking, American Gangster rates three and a half stars.
