To shine at all in the gangster genre and defend your territory now actually seems like an act of impossibility. The great role models are too powerful, their stories too masterful and style-defining, that any attempt to build on them seems like a cheap copy.
We all know those tired gangster stories that try to be like ‘The Godfather’, ‘Goodfellas’, ‘Casino’ or ‘Scarface’ and almost degenerate into a parody, be it ‘Legend’ or ‘New Jack City’. Squad,” which I think was extremely successful.
“American Gangster” is currently streaming on Netflix!
“American Gangster” can’t quite keep up with the masterpieces mentioned above, but it is much better than the other imitators. Because Ridley Scott, with a cast including Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin, Idris Elba and Cuba Gooding Jr., clearly managed to distinguish itself from the swamp of gangster film mediocrity with the story about gang boss Frank Lucas and agent Richie Roberts.
You can convince yourself of this. “American Gangster” is currently available as a subscription to the streaming service Netflix. Below I want to tell you what Scott’s gangster film is about and why it is worth seeing.
That’s what ‘American Gangster’ is about
In the late 1960s, African-American Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) steps out of the shadow of his mentor in New York after the death and builds a heroin empire that conquers the pole position on the market. Because Frank uses the war in Vietnam to smuggle pure heroin from the Asian country to the US and sell it cheaper than the competition.
Hot on his trail is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), an honest, private but unreliable Jewish police officer who is ostracized by his colleagues and is still trying to track down drug lord Frank within a corrupt police force.
Rather than re-staging the simple rise and fall of a drug lord in the footsteps of ‘Scarface’, Scott’s film takes much closer account of the structural conditions that promote drug abuse and trafficking. really undermines the family kitsch and the dream of the innocent ‘businessman’ who is above everything.
Because while Frank peacefully says prayers with his family at the Thanksgiving dinner table in a monstrous mansion, others are killing themselves with his material.
But no one really wants to do anything about it. Why? Everyone makes too much money in bribes to want to put an end to this misery. Moreover, a drunk African American population cannot do anything to change the terrible social conditions, so everything can continue as usual.
New York has rarely been as dilapidated as here
Scott captures this gulag, which calls itself New York, in hauntingly unadorned images that nevertheless exude enormous appeal thanks to this aesthetic of ugliness: such a poor New York has rarely been seen in mainstream cinema.
Washington (always best when playing an anti-hero or a bastard) and Crowe (in one of his best roles!) play their ambivalent characters as always incredibly charismatic and with enormous presence. They breathe a lot of natural life into it until it all culminates in one of my favorite movie scenes of all time in the interrogation room. With this sequence, I would even go so far as to say that the level of confrontation and dialogue is comparable to the meeting between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in ‘Heat’.
Despite the focus on Washington and Crowe, for me the highlight of the film (as is often the case) is Josh Brolin, who, despite having very few scenes, sets the standard for the role of a dirty, corrupt cop. The secret star of this film, which is worth seeing for the cast alone.