American Gangster

Damn, that is a badass poster. Wait, it looks kind of familiar... I think Scarface did it already. Or was it The Godfather (sorry so small)? Either way, I think I'm starting to see a pattern. If you're going to make a movie about gangsters and drugs, then you must, must have a poster with a black/white background contrasted by a solid black/white badass character from your movie. Add some cool graphics to the background (such as a skyline) to make it a little more original, and voila, you have a badass poster on your hands.

So I'm reviewing the new movie American Gangster in today's installment. It's about a gangster, Frank (Denzel Washington), in New York who figures out a way to get his "product" directly from a cheap source in Vietnam, driving out all of his competition. And while this is going on, a police detective, Richie (Russel Crowe, see the poster), is on the hunt for the top drug dealer in New York, who happens to be Frank.

American Gangster starts off extremely strong (you will see in the video below), opening with an extremely violent scene that is not very necessary or relevant to the story, but a great scene nonetheless. However, it gave me the impression that American Gangster was going to be the next Scarface/Godfather, which (unfortunately) just isn't true, as one discovers by the end of the movie (this will be discussed later).

The majority of the movie is spent establishing Frank as the dominant gangster in New York, and Richie's chase after him. While there is no problem with this, it's really unfortunate that the two main characters never actually meet until the very end of the movie; Frank doesn't even know of his counterpart's existence until then. It could've used a scene similar to Heat, in which they meet together in a cafe sometime in the middle of the movie and discuss how one or the other is going to "go down." It would've added a lot more conflict and made the story even more engaging.

Throughout the movie it is made extremely clear that Frank and Richie are polar opposites. Frank is a gangster who runs thousands of kilos of cocaine into the country using the military and will kill anyone if necessary. Richie, on the other hand, is what looks to be like the only straight cop in all of the New York police force, every other cop takes bribes from gangsters to look the other way. I don't really have a problem with this, it's necessary for the movie, but it just seems somewhat exaggerated. It's also kind of annoying to have the idea that Richie is an unusually good cop constantly rammed into my head. I mean, I get it, stop fucking telling me.

[WARNING - THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH/VIDEO CONTAINS A MINOR SPOILER FOR THE END OF THE MOVIE, DON'T READ/WATCH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE EXPOSED TO SUCH THINGS, BUT YOU'RE MISSING OUT]
While these issues are somewhat bothersome, they don't really bring down the movie that much, it's still quite engrossing. My main problem with the movie that makes me think less of it is the complete 180 it that it pulls of at the end. As I said earlier, the entire movie is spent establishing Frank as this ruthless, badass gangster who won't give up. Despite all this, once Frank is caught by Richie, he decides to join sides with Richie in order to bring down all of his family members as well as police who worked with him or took money from him. I know this is a true story, but the way it is portrayed completely changes Frank's character in an unreasonable fashion. All of a sudden Frank becomes all "buddy-buddy" with Richie; the two seem like best friends by one of the last scenes. Contrary to the almost all of the movie, Frank is portrayed as a fucking good person in the last scenes. That's right, that guy who shot and killed a guy only after setting him on fire in the first scene, is now a good person. In order to fully demonstrate my point I have found a video which shows both the very first and one of the last scenes from American Gangster. Watch and judge for yourself (keep in mind that Russel Crowe is the guy who has been trying to find and arrest this ruthless gangster throughout the ENTIRE movie):



[OK YOU CAN START READING NOW IF YOU SKIPPED THE EARLIER PART]
Despite these shortcomings (not to mention the length, they could have easily shortened it to a more reasonable length) American Gangster is thoroughly involving and presents a great story (which is based on true events, by the way). And although it never reaches the level of hardcore-ness that is achieved in the very first scene, it definitely held my interest throughout the rest of the movie. For a crime/gangster drama, it is excellently presented and definitely worth seeing.

American Gangster starts fast, maintains a good pace through most of the movie, but it does fall flat towards the end. The only thing that really bothered me about it was Frank's unreasonable character change at the end of the movie. Other than that, it's a well done film and, although it probably will not achieve the status that Ridley Scott looked like he was going for (as an epic gangster movie, such as Scarface), it is still a great watch and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good crime drama.