Rating of
3/4
Good true to life story not much fabrication here!
Lee - wrote on 11/05/12
Personally i think that director Marty Scorcese is the king of this genre however will have to admit that Ridley Scott did a fine job here, alleviating from his usual sci-fi genre that he also directs so well. American Gangster is the rags to riches story of fomrer drug king pen during the 70's Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). After being a driver for 15 years for then Harlem king pin Bumpy Johnson (Clarence Williams III) Bumpy dies leaving Lucas to take over his business . In a rather ballsy movie, he decides to eliminate the middle man (the mob) and buy the drugs from the war torn country of Vietnam himself. Now i personally have watched a load of films on drug trade and trafficking, usually finding a majoirty of them quite cool and somewhat fascinating, however there is nothing cool or fascinating about creating false bottoms and usuing the coffins of dead soldiers returing home from that dreadful war as ways of getting his product (heroin) into the U.S. in fact that was despicable. The other half of this tale comes to us in the form of brokendown do gooder detective Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) A cop who has, aside from a failed marriage, a bad time with his fellow officers after Roberts searches an abandoned vehicle and finding no less then 1 million in cash stowed away in it's trunk turns it in to his precinct as it was 'The decent thing to do'
Robert's upon hearing smidgeons of information about the goings on of Frank Lucas decides to team up with a few of his fellow officers that he can still depend on to spend the rest of the film doing surveillance, wire taps etc to bring Lucas's drug empire to a halt. After watching this film i decided to research a little as i usually do during a real life event flick as to see how much was shinola. From what i read it seems that Scott's team did a pretty good job depicting the events around these two individuals lives however there is of coarse the usual fabrications...this is Hollywood remember? I enjoyed American Gangster immensly and think it deserves to be up on the movie shelf right alongside movies that are already there Goodfellas, The Godfather trilogy and Scarface.
