Nonna Rating System: $$$$
American Gangster is stunning in that Ridley Scott sort of way. It doesn't hurt to have Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in your movie, even if they only have one scene together. Why is it that, so often when two major male stars are
in a picture nowadays, they rarely have scenes together -- for example, DeNiro and Pacino in Heat?In the end, it really doesn't matter. This is an excellent, complex film with meticulous performances by both actors: Washington, a drug kingpin whose private life is controlled, conservative, and drug-free and Crowe, a hyper-honest cop whose personal life is a shambles. In one sense, this is a classic Hollywood story: the cop no one listens to is convinced he can identify the who and how of the influx of drugs into the U.S. He is the only one who finally understands that the drugs arrive from Viet Nam in the false bottoms of metal coffins containing dead soldiers in body bags.
What makes the story original is the subtext of institutional racism that permeates the film: the white law enforcement establishment can't even begin to imagine that a black man might actually be the mastermind behind the drug trade in New York and its environs.
I always regret liking a violent film, but Scott doesn't ask us to revel in the violence here. He weaves scenes depicting the brutal, horrid reality of drug use throughout the movie. There's nothing pretty about these flashes of reality. We are confronted with the unspeakable consequences of drug use on individuals, families, children, and the neighborhoods they live in.
In 1971, my wasbund was stationed at Travis Air Force Base north of San Francisco. I did my grocery shopping at the Base Commissary which was next to the flightline. I often saw KC-130s from Viet Nam taxiing close to the Commissary parking lot after they had landed. One day, I just stood by my car and watched as soldiers got off a plane in their fatigues. Many of them kissed the ground. Some cried. After they had disembarked, the plane taxied and parked next to the base hospital. First, bandaged men were unloaded on stretchers, IV bottles attached to their arms. Then, the metal coffins were unloaded; they rested on the tarmac waiting for connecting planes that would take the bodies home. Some of them were headed to the East Coast. The film makes me wonder. Did some of those coffins contain drugs?
Nonna Rating System:
$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$ = Worth paying the Matinee price
$$ = Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it
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