American Gangster (2007)

Outline: After the death of his boss, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) seeks to take his position in Harlem. With the help of a cousin stationed in Vietnam, Lucas sets up a pipeline to bring pure heroin into New York. At the same time, Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), a New Jersey cop whose honesty has bred distrust among the force, is selected to run an elite drug squad. His investigation slowly brings him to Lucas as Lucas climbs higher and higher in the underworld.

Although I am certain I read it in the AV Club, I'm not sure exactly where. I can't even get the wording right to find it again. Suffice it to say that somewhere, someone in the AV Club made the trenchant point that because the Western movie is such mined territory and because there are so many quality Westerns out there, any new Western has to justify its existence in order to matter. Why do we need another Western? The same went for the gangster pic.

That sort of stuck in my head, and I started wondering about why we need American Gangster as I sat in the theatre. I'm not quite sure, to be honest. It benefits from being based on a true story, as well as being the first movie to portray this particular story. It also benefits from having a spectacular supporting cast with wonderful turns from the quiet, charismatic Chiwetel Ejiofor; the greasy Josh Brolin; and the underused and underrated John Hawkes. That's only the tip of the iceberg.

It benefits greatly from Washington's restrained performance. Lucas is smart and a charmer, but he's got the coiled danger of jungle cat behind that mega-watt smile. Steven Zailian's script, from an article by Mark Jacobson, is smart about who Lucas is, and it isn't afraid to let who he is to his family butt up against the consequences of what he does.

Unfortunately, the script works too hard to set up Roberts and Lucas as balancing opposites. Nearly everything that Lucas says or does finds its equal and opposite reaction in Roberts: Lucas recruits his brothers, Roberts recruits in a bar; Lucas dates and marries one woman, Roberts is a divorcé with a string of women; Lucas sits down to massive family dinners, Roberts mashes potato chips onto tuna salad. The only thing they have in common, it would seem, is their commitment to their jobs.

It's actually a great idea for the script to keep Lucas and Roberts apart until a handful of back-to-back scenes near the end. It's just too bad it takes so long to get there. Even so, it's spectacular to watch even if they don't tear into each other. It quiet and rhythmic, and you can see how things would be different if they knew each other under other circumstances. It's a little like the diner scene in Heat, and a lot more powerful that you would expect from a situation that's free of histrionics or mugging or monologues. Just two predators of a different sort, sniffing the air for danger.

For, indeed, Crowe also gives a fairly restrained performance. Roberts is also smart and charming, and he is also dangerous, but he is more languid about it because he has to be. He's on the opposite side of everyone, it would seem, from dirty cops to criminals to his own family, so he's got to pick his moments even more carefully than the patient Lucas.

Director Ridley Scott deserves some of the praise for bring these two under control, as I have seen over-the-top performances from both in the past. But I also know he deserves some of the praise for making this movie too long and for hiding that Grain Train Robbery homage until the end. And if it weren't so long, the rest of it wouldn't really matter. B+