Review of "American Gangster"
sean | 06 November, 2007 15:10
The Age of Moral Ambiguity
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Ridley Scott's "American Gangster", an action-packed crime drama. (Caution, spoilers ahead)
The action was well-paced and exciting, but I left the theater with a distinct sense of unease. The story starts out describing the situatuions of a low-level gangster and a "narcotics division" police officer; well-acted by Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe respectively.
By mid-film, Denzel's character Frank Lucas is one of the top heroin importing crime lords in the country, and Russell's honest cop is heading a then newly-formed and federally-funded narcotics enforcement squad. Throughout the film, Denzel's Lucas peddles heroin on an industrial scale, murders rivals, and enforces obedience with an iron fist. True, once he's achieved a level of financial success he brings his family to New York from North Carolina and employs his many brothers as lieutenants, even putting his poor aged mother up in a palatial estate. Ok, a thug with family values, we get it. But does this really redeem him socially?
The inevitable climax ensues when American forces pull out
of Vietnam in the mid 1970s, and Lucas' Indochinese Import/Export
business is threatened. Crowe doggedly pursues the crafty smuggler and eventually gets the collar. The real twist for me however is at the end.
Lucas plea bargains for a lighter sentence in exchange for
turning in as many corrupt cops as he can finger. According to the film, which is "based on actual events" a full 2/3rds of New York's Drug Enforcement Police forces are brought up on charges. My point of confusion/contention is this:what is the moral of story? Is this movie seeking to make some point, or is it pure entertainment? Am I supposed to sympathize with Lucas' character? In a lovely montage towards the end, after Lucas has opted to plea bargain, he is shown in grandfatherly reading glasses, wearing a sweater and laughing congenially with Crowe's character as they plot the downfall of so many crooked cops. (huh?) In a text-based epilogue, the movie states Crowe's character later quits law enforcement to become a criminal defense lawyer, and that his first client is Frank Lucas. Wait, now it's a buddy film? Lucas was originally sentenced to 70 years in prison. Due to his cooperation he served only 15 years, and was released in 1991. So this murderous wholesale heroin importer is back on the streets? Am I supposed to feel good that he turned in all the dirty cops? Am I supposed to believe he's some victim of circumstances and deep down just a really a nice guy with a strong (albeit misdirected) entrepreneurial drive? Sure this historic episode (depending on the veracity of the script) probably cleaned up the act of drug enforcement agencies nationwide, but what is the state of affairs today? It seems to me the drug war is still an endless cycle of corruption, cynicism and shattered innocence.
This movie left me deeply confused. I suppose it is an interesting story, but what on earth possessed a director the caliber of Ridley Scott to make this film I may never know. Most of the time with crime dramas I feel like the moral of the story is pretty straightforward, for instance like in the recent Martin Scorcese film "The Departed". Here is an honest to goodness tragedy. Pretty much everyone dies, and the point of it seems to say, live by the sword, die by the sword, and children beware, because in fact, a life of crime is really not glamorous. Maybe this was a movie about redemption, but again, I just can't tell.