Most audiences think of Denzel Washington as one of the good guys. He’s known for playing the "hero" characters who save the day at the end of the movie.
His last foray into villainous territory (a corrupt cop in 2001’s Training Day) won him an Academy Award. His villainous character in American Gangster could do the same, or at least grab him an Oscar nomination. Washington is excellent in American Gangster as real-life heroin kingpin Frank Lucas. Co-starring Russell Crowe (who also is top-notch and may receive some recognition come award season), American Gangster is a gangster/crime movie that you won’t easily forget.
The film, which hits theaters on Friday, takes place in Harlem during the late 1960s to early ’70s. After the death of his mentor, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, Frank Lucas decides it’s his time to shine and fill the void left by Bumpy by cornering the heroin market. Frank had been Bumpy’s driver for years, and watched Bumpy work as an associate and enforcer for the Mafia in Harlem.
With the knowledge of watching Mafia deals go down for years, Frank decides to cut out the middleman and starts smuggling heroin directly from Asia, using coffins of deceased soldiers from the Vietnam War. He calls the heroin "Blue Magic" and makes a fortune — his heroin is of better quality and cheaper than anything else on the streets.
Frank buys a big house for his mother and brings his brothers and cousins from North Carolina to work for him. He marries Miss Puerto Rico and is pretty much living the high life, all while junkies on the streets are dying from his Blue Magic.
Crowe plays the morally conflicted New Jersey cop Richie Roberts. Richie wants to be seen as the good guy — his colleagues laugh at him when he turns in a million dollars of found unmarked drug money. Yet he is a womanizer who cheats on his wife and then sleeps with his divorce attorney during the trial. Richie gets the special case of tracking down the kingpin responsible for the heroin that is taking lives. American Gangster becomes a nice cat-and-mouse thriller as we watch Richie put together the pieces to nab Frank. The movie is quite long (two and a half hours). Other than that, it’s flawless. The characters are well-drawn by writer Steven Zaillain. The movie’s supporting actors include Ruby Dee (who has one particularly moving scene as Frank’s mother) and rappers T.I., Common and RZA. Cuba Gooding Jr. has a small role as Nicky Barnes, a.k.a. Mr. Untouchable, a competing drug dealer in Harlem. The role was a good choice for Gooding, who has been in a string of bad ones since his 1996 Oscar-winning role in Jerry Maguire.
After last year’s box office flop, A Good Year, Crowe and director Ridley Scott have adequately redeemed themselves with American Gangster. It definitely has some of the makings of an epic movie, but you probably won’t hear it mentioned in the same sentence as The Godfather because it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.
That being said, American Gangster is still an engaging movie, and definitely one of the best I’ve seen this year. •• Movie Grade: A