American Gangster (Ridley Scott, 2007)

[Magic Hate Ball]

Yep, it's coming. 20 mintues longer.

Oh, cool, that rounds it out to 3 hours. Hopefully it's good stuff added in.

You can't possibly be that dumb for realizing this

I'm meta-dumb.

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this tonight and the majority of the film felt warmed over at best. Scott brings nothing new to the gangster genre, offering up the familiar frameworks and cliches that have marked many other standard films over the past couple of decades. Even the church service/drug bust montage felt really old. The problem is Zaillian's script - it is really unfocused and it's something I don't even think the forthcoming extended cut is going to solve. Much of the Roberts custody battle was pretty pointless - there probably could've been more interesting ways to show that he wasn't a complete angel. Frankly, the best part of the entire film is the last fifteen minutes when Washington and Crowe - who are both great in the film - finally share some screen time. It felt more alive and electric than everything that proceeded it. I think a much more interesting, and original film could've been developed out of the revelation

Spoiler

that Roberts went on to defend Lucas in court, lessening his sentence from 70 to 15 years. Also, the choice of the closing song to be Public Enemy's "Can't Truss It" was particularly effective.

And for anyone worried that Lucas is glorified, in my mind, Scott did a very good job and making him a pretty unsympathetic character, particularly the Thanksgiving/junkie montage.

Oh yeah, and would it have been too much to ask the makeup department to cover up the RZA's Wu-Tang Clan tattoo?

The DEA isn't happy. From IMDB:

DEA Agents Sue Universal for Defamation Over 'American Gangster'

Claiming that Universal Pictures falsely claimed in the text appearing at the end of American Gangster that the events depicted in the movie "led to the convictions of three-quarters of New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency," three DEA agents filed a $55 million lawsuit against the studio Wednesday. "With this utterly false and defamatory statement, the defendant has ruined and impugned the reputations of these honest and courageous public servants in the eyes of millions of people," the lawsuit said. The agents are seeking class-action status with the suit and claim that no law enforcement officer was convicted of any crime related to the events depicted in the movie. They also say the film falsely depicted New Jersey detective Richard Roberts portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie. Universal denied the accusations, pointing out that the movie does not defame any federal agents and that the text specifically mentions only the New York City agency.

[tavernier]

I guess they knew those Oscar noms won't be piling up so they might as well sue while people still remember the movie.

[noelbotevera]

My review of American Gangster.

[Belmondo]

I hope this is not a stretch, but the ending of "American Gangster" tells of all the elite narcotics cops brought down in New York City ... which brings us right to the beginning of Lumet's "Prince of the City".

Both are based on true stories and although the cases are different, the timeframes dovetail nicely with more focus on the drug lord in "Gangster" and more focus on the corrupt cops in "Prince". Nice performances from Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach and others, and I was much more involved with it than with anything I saw in "Gangster".

So, if almost three hours of the one was not enough for you, try almost three hours more of the other.

[exte]

Any word on whether they ever considered "American Gangsta"?

[flyonthewall2983]

If it was directed by anybody but an Englishman, I'm sure it would have been.

[domino harvey]

Oh I get it, because of black people

[Cold Bishop]

Oh I get it, because of black people

Actually, it's because it's a film by white people about black people.

[domino harvey]

Oh I get it, because of black people

Actually, its because its a film by white people about black people.

Wait are we talking about a movie

[Antoine Doinel]

Russel Crowe is black?

[Awesome Welles]

I have avoided this thread of late as I really didn't think much of this movie and it just occurred to me that Narc was actually a really good movie about cops in the 70s. This movie so wanted to be Serpico or The French Connection and it failed miserably to even stand beside them and Narc, as far as I remember didn't have that problem. Has anyone else thought this?

[Cockney_Geezer]

Russel Crowe is black?

i think he meant Josh Brolin. Russel Crowe is white.

[Awesome Welles]

Josh Brolin is black?

[Cold Bishop]

Josh Brolin is black?

In the dark...

And now Domino, this is an invocation of racial stereotypes.

[John Cope]

Just watched the extended edition tonight and found it to be a very satisfying entertainment. If that sounds like kind of paltry praise I suppose it should. Antoine is right, there's nothing new here at all; but, what struck me about it was the disparity between the extraordinary high level of craft and the relentlessly routine, mediocre core material. It is full of cliches and also indulges in textbook cutting (e.g. "Who could possibly afford to bring this dope in?" Cut to Frank Lucas sauntering through the doorway to his club), and yet for all that it was never boring, at least for me, and that has to be attributable to the dedication of the cast/crew. In fact, it's so very well done in so many ways that the plethora of cliches becomes revitalized and you consider their essential truths afresh.

But the movie is terribly familiar stuff, despite the novelty angle which I'm sure drew Scott and company to the project to begin with. Every single sequence is telegraphed from start to finish and yet, once again, somehow I wasn't bothered by that. At the very least, see it for Savides' awesome camera work and the committed central performances--this despite a script which forces awful dialogue on them as examples of being "natural" and "in the moment". The tough guy stuff is tedious as it seldom feels believed in and most often comes off as perfunctory at best. Still, dialogue and recognizable human relationships were never Scott's strongest suit.

One other thing. As I watched this I began to consider Scott's relationship to Crowe. It seems as though Scott has finally found the male lead he was clearly searching for in all those earlier permutations from Berenger in Someone to Watch Over Me to Douglas in Black Rain and Bridges in White Squall. But what interests me is that Scott is still most warmly regarded in some quarters for his sympathetic sensitivity to the feminine in all its various embodiments. Of course most of the praise still centers on Thlema & Louise (which is a mistake as it does not hold up) but clearly other instances can be assessed. For me, the richest depiction of this is in the aforementioned Someone to Watch Over Me, which I regard as possibly his finest film. The reason for its richness has a lot to do with the confluence of character types Scott is dealing with and setting against one another. There he addresses the idea of the strong feminine and the strong masculine and considers how they function in tandem, what ways they reveal themselves and why they might cancel one another out. It's absolutely excellent in execution and a tragically underappreciated picture (especially as its nuanced understanding of human interaction is atypical for Scott) but I do wonder if he has made a move away from direct reflection on this theme; if so that's unfortunate though it may account fro the essential blandness of much of his work since the fascinating, though overstated and flawed G.I. Jane. The last film of his to address this in any central or meaningful fashion was probably Hannibal as there he really does establish Julianne Moore as representative of an idyllic purity in harsh contrast to the grotesque, parodic excesses of masculine assertion embodied by Hannibal (he does attempt a similar positing of essential virtue in American Gangster with Richie as the "one good cop" but it comes across as more rote and less defined by gender studies--the gathering the special forces crime team montage is eye roll inducing). There are some interesting strains of this theme still apparent in Matchstick Men but they don't really come together or add up to much till the very end and by that point it's a case of too little too late. Any thoughts on this?

[flyonthewall2983]

I think it's an excellent film, and definitely one of the best of last year. I think John is right on the money about the relationship between Ridley and Russell. That kind of working relationship between actor and director has been cropping up again in the last decade. Clooney/Soderbergh being the obvious example. I'm wondering now if David Cronenberg has found a similar synchronicity with Viggo too. And Russell/Ridley have found that for sure. It makes me wonder though if a similar thing would have happened in the 80's with Harrison Ford if Blade Runner went without a problem.

One thing that irked me about the ending, and it's more reflective of the actual issue of our country's war on drugs than the film itself. The problem being that the DEA appears like a snake eating itself when they apprehend and prosecute the dealers, only to release them once they give them information about other dealers. This is personified in the intriguing documentary Cocaine Cowboys about the drug wars in Miami. All but one criminal who was interviewed were put through that same cycle and were free when the film was shot.

[skuhn8]

I finally got around to watching this. Enjoyable fare IMO but nothing to put it into the ranks of great gangster films. That's ok...but...
What really irked me at the ending was how it

Spoiler

quickly rushed through some lame Good Will Hunting bonding-at-the-blackboard drivel. Totally out of character for Frank Lucas, who up until now has been stone-faced, to pull out perhaps the biggest shit-eating grin of his career before the guy who crushed his world and will likely put him away for decades.

I thought perhaps this lame-o ending had been foisted upon Scott, so went back ran it through with the commentary--lo and behold, he found this very effective and some other out-of-touch cock and bull.