American Gangster
 

This movie was a travesty. But this article on Frank Lucas is very good. They could've written the script straigt from the article.
http://nymag.com/nymag/features/3649/

Re: American Gangster
 

The movie was inspired by the article.

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In Mark Jacobson's "The Return of Superfly," the Aug. 14, 2000, New York magazine article that provided the basis for this movie....

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review

Re: American Gangster
 

Wow what a disappointment to read that review. Ridley Scott is such a great director yet so unreliable. He seems to be at his worst in urban melodrama. I think he needs space ships or crusades, and you need a Michael Mann directing this flick. The review at many points sounded like the movie was full of parallels to the relationship between cop and robber in Heat.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
The movie was inspired by the article.

[ QUOTE ]
In Mark Jacobson's "The Return of Superfly," the Aug. 14, 2000, New York magazine article that provided the basis for this movie....

[/ QUOTE ]


review

[/ QUOTE ]
That's the article in the kink i gave

Re: American Gangster
 

I saw this with the wife Saturday night. While I thought it was a bit to too pat, a bit of a cinematic spline that had to pass through certain predetermined points, it was definitely a good movie. Not great, but certainly not a travesty. Would recommend it.

Re: American Gangster
 

ahh i had high hopes for this one

Re: American Gangster
 

78% on the tomatometer people. The film does not suck.

Jebus you people are picky.

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: American Gangster
 

I don't think that this film was a 'travesty'. I thought it was definitely worth a watch. While a bit long and drawn in the middle, I still enjoyed it. disclaimer- I really enjoy this genre of movie.

Re: American Gangster
 

[censored] all the haters, denzel washington is a [censored] badass.

Re: American Gangster
 

I wouldn't characterize the movie as a travesty. It was a gangster movie the likes of which we've seen before enlivened by two of our finest actors.

The movie reminded me of three older movies, all of which, incidentally or not, starred Al Pacino: Serpico, in the sense that Crowe's cop is an honest cop looked at as a pariah by the dishonest cops around him; The Godfather II, especially when Lucas complains to the mafia boss that they tried to kill his wife; and Heat in the attempt to make the story into an epic and in trying to show that the cops are almost indistinuishable from the bad guys.

From the standpoint of craft, it was a terrific movie. Washington has a gravitas on film that exceeds that of any other actor today. And Crowe, apparently, decided to downplay his character accordingly, to good effect.

Though it is two hours and forty minutes, it proceeds at breakneck pace and doesn't feel long. While the story is interesting from an historical and sociological point of view, it seemed to me to have an emptiness about it that made it less interesting than my favorite gangster movies where we really get to know the villains (Goodfellas, or The Godfather. Lucas does give a speech about how he was sent on his path at age six when the cops killed his cousin (in actuality, according to the real Lucas, it was the KKK), but we don't really get a sense of knowing him like we got to know Michael Corleone or Henry Hill.

I wonder how the black community will view the film. The review in The New Yorker criticized the film for glorifying Lucas, but I didn't see it that way. That said, Lucas was a hero to perhaps the biggest black hero the coun- try has ever had, Joe Louis, and the film does show Louis at Lucas's trial.

Cuba Gooding is outstanding in a small role, as is Ruby Dee as Lucas's mother, and Josh Brolin does good work as the worse or the corrupt cops.

Well worth seeing. We went at 12:15 yesterday. It was sold out in a big theater and the audience applauded long and loud at the end. This would seem to be the kind of movie the Academy will look favorably upon.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
[censored] all the haters, denzel washington is a [censored] badass.

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many post are basically saying this. i dont rate movies by the actors. a good movie needs good actors, but acting quality is irrelvant (and can't be judged as well) without plot/character and philosophical development.

Also, I hated the depiction of black in this movie. If you read the article on Lucas, you'll see the movie's potential vs result. It reminded me of 300 after watching the history channel's expose: great potential in the story if it was made into a cartoon.

Re: American Gangster
 

The RZA and the shot of his Wu-Tang tattoo were funny.

I thought this movie was fine. I wasn't blown away, but I wasn't disappointed.

I could have done without the entire divorce/custody subplot; Denzel was the show here, not some waste of screentime best suited for the Lifetime channel.

Re: American Gangster
 

Nice counter-point to the linked review, but unfortunately it sounds like the review's points on the whole weren't shown up as wrong or misguided. The "for the love of a woman, an empire crumbles" schtick mentioned in the review seemed like injecting a ridiculous amount of Hollywoodness into a story that was already pretty epic and fascinating and would be trivialized by doing so, for instance. And the article the story was based on showed Lucas as having a definite evil side that it sounds like the movie didn't explore -- odd when it comes to someone who killed so many people, some up close and personal. That sounds kind of disappointing and like it fundamentally changes the man's story, and in the wrong way -- by cleaning it up and making it more politically acceptable, and more of a story fit for a movie star, than a story that had a movie star acting in it.

Re: American Gangster
 

I really enjoyed this movie. If any of you ever saw "Hoodlum" you would know how cool it was to see the end of bumpy johnsons reign.

Re: American Gangster
 

A forgetable movie, but certainly not a travesty. A couple silly plotlines sprinkled here and there. Also, you can feel free to walk out of the movie when Lucas gets arrested. They next (last) 30 minutes is [censored].

Re: American Gangster
 

"the article the story was based on showed Lucas as having a definite evil side that it sounds like the movie didn't explore"

This is not true, from the opening shot (no pun intended) of the movie.

Re: American Gangster
 

BTW, Bumpy didn't really die in a big-box store as shown in the movie. He died in a nightclub.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
"the article the story was based on showed Lucas as having a definite evil side that it sounds like the movie didn't explore"

This is not true, from the opening shot (no pun intended) of the movie.

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Well that's a relief at least. Though the linked article did sound like they cleaned Lucas up.

Re: American Gangster
 

"Though the linked article did sound like they cleaned Lucas up."

Well, Denzel Washington is playing him. That said, they show his dark side. Without giving away anything, they show him committing heinous acts and they show the consequences of his drug pushing. I haven't seen the American Gangster episode featuring Mr. Lucas, but one suspects that he is not quite the person that Denzel Washington portrays in a major Hollywood movie (nor, for that matter, that the man that Russell Crowe portrays is not quite like his portrayal either).

Re: American Gangster
 

Does Denzel have the range to pull off the characterizations you are describing? Against Russel Crowe, Washington has not shown anything that I would consider complex. Hollywood would have to rewrite the movie so Denzel could play the role.

Re: American Gangster
 

I think he does. I think we got to know him in Training Day and in Philadelphia.

Re: American Gangster
 

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Well worth seeing. We went at 12:15 yesterday. It was sold out in a big theater and the audience applauded long and loud at the end.

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Are you serious? Is this a thing that happens in theaters? I have only been to a theater once and that was like 10 years ago so I can't imagine everyone there applauding. It just seems like something you would see 4 decades ago not in our generation.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
78% on the tomatometer people. The film does not suck.

Jebus you people are picky.

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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stick to political philosophy. this movie was baaaaad.

Re: American Gangster
 

Happens all the time. At least here in L.A. At the end of Notes on a Scandal, which I saw at the Arclight in Hollywood, someone shouted out "Bravo!" and there was sustained applause.

Re: American Gangster
 

In L.A., people practically give the popcorn advertisements standing O's. We're very expressive if we like a movie. Maybe because there are so many people you bump into in the industry, and even people not in it talk and think about movies all the time. I think the culture as a whole just identifies with the industry somehow.

Re: American Gangster
 

You absolutely cannot understand the movie experience until you see a movie in Los Angeles. It may be because %75 of the audience did background work at one point. Standing O for a popcorn commercial: LOL.

Re: American Gangster
 

"By four o'clock, we had enough n****** in the street to make a Tarzan movie."

i'm in the library and i lol'ed.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
"By four o'clock, we had enough n****** in the street to make a Tarzan movie."

i'm in the library and i lol'ed.

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I told u the article was good [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: American Gangster
 

BET documentary on Lucas you can watch online:

http://www.bet.com/onblast/default.h...b=&itype=e

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
BET documentary on Lucas you can watch online:

http://www.bet.com/onblast/default.h...b=&itype=e

[/ QUOTE ]

TYVM

Re: American Gangster
 

no great acting in the movie but i liked it alot and never lost interest at any point.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
78% on the tomatometer people. The film does not suck.

Jebus you people are picky.

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

stick to political philosophy. this movie was baaaaad.

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Don't be a moron, it's good. Ebert gave it 4 stars FWIW.

And all you simpletons who left before the credits were over missed something. Idiots.

Re: American Gangster
 

I liked the movie. What did people who left before the credits were over miss?

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
I liked the movie. What did people who left before the credits were over miss?

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Re: American Gangster
 

Not much. Just a dark figure walking into a diner, holds a gun up, and when he fires the screen lights up and you see that he's Frank Lucas.

I liked the movie, it's not a classic though, imo. I thought the ending was a little too pat for that, neither epic nor subtle, just sort of there, gets the job done, but fails to leave a lasting impressive. I enjoyed watching the movie immensely, though, and that's what you ask for, really. So at the end of the day it was worth my $9 (except that it was free, being that I watched someone else's bootleg).

Re: American Gangster
 

I just can't believe how many NYC cops were corrupt. Unreal.
A total free for all.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
I just can't believe how many NYC cops were corrupt. Unreal.
A total free for all.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the part about it that aggravates me. The fictionalizing of an incredible story to supposedly make it "better" is a Hollywood cancer, and it's especially disappointing from someone with the skill of Ridley Scott. He's far from havimg to be a hack.

Re: American Gangster
 

[ QUOTE ]
I just can't believe how many NYC cops were corrupt. Unreal.
A total free for all.

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Ever seen Serpico?

Re: American Gangster
 

Are you saying that the making of the cops corrupt was "hollywoodizing." It was true. An incredible percentage were involved.

Re: American Gangster
 

No, read that review linked earlier. Some of the stuff about Lucas and the general story were made up. The cops being corrupt stuff was true.