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.
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