American Gangster
Sunday 18 May 2008 - Filed under entertainment
Although the film was not bad by any standards, the whole story left a lot to be desired. Though Russell Crowe is a capable actor, he sounded more Australian in this film than a Jewish New Yorker and Denzel Washington didn’t seem much of a gangster. Since the film is nominally based on the story of a real-life Harlem drug lord, Frank Lucas and the premise of this film is how an African-American criminal outsmarted and outclassed the Mafia in illicit drug trade, it would be hard to pull it off but I think the film would have better chemistry with the roles switched.
Denzel’s a good and even great actor, but he doesn’t have that dangerous edge. He’ll always look like an accountant or lawyer. The best stretch would be a disillusioned cop or slightly bad cop.
The parts I enjoyed most about the film was how it recreated Harlem in the late 60s and 70s. The fashion, the music was all done pretty good. As far as telling the rise and fall of a drug pin within 2 and a half hours, along with the crumbling family life of a straight cop against hippie-era Harlem and a city run by crooked cops, you got too much of a mouthful. Maybe if it was a TV movie series. Otherwise, the best you could do is focus on a very narrow time frame and devise good plot driver.
2008-05-18 » baron
19 May 2008 @ 11:36 am
I think your review is on the money. I, like you, thought that there was something off about the film along with the fact that it did last so long, I think it could have been whittled down to 2 hours. I think because it was based on real life they pulled some punches with Frank Lucas and thus we didn’t get to see him get his hands as dirty as he did. Or maybe he really was a little “diet coke” for the Mafia trade as opposed to a Dinero or Liotta as seen in a movie that might be a little over the top, Goodfellas.
Maybe our saturation of the mafia genre movies and television series leaves us little forgiveness when another side is given that could be very true to life, but leaves us wanting more.
19 May 2008 @ 3:16 pm
I think you’ve got a great point there. A good gangster film is getting harder to pull off with the whole cottage industry with even actors more or less specializing in the genre. Which is probably why a lot of the successful ones in recent memory are more or less comedies.