American Gangster (2007)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Any gangster movie that paints its criminals and the world that created them as the villains gets brownie points from me, and that's exactly what makes Steven Zaillan and Ridley Scott's 'American Gangster,' so refreshing.
  
  Where other genre films are seduced by glamour, wealth and status, this one never shies away from the ruthless evil of Denzel Washington's central drug-lord Frank Lucas. Inspired by his late father figure lamenting the death of competition, he becomes obsessed with monopolising the drug trade in New York and beyond, buying pure-grade heroin from Thailand via soldiers returning from Vietnam, and undercutting all the other dealers. He uses and abuses everyone around him to make more and more money - including his impressionable cousins that he hires to help him - and we see the devastating effects of his drug trade on the streets.
  
  But alongside Lucas himself, the film also paints the evil of a system that allows this kind of business to prosper. The Police are shown as institutionally corrupt, with Russell Crowe's boy-scout cop Richie Roberts ostracised for seizing cash from a mobstsr's car, and Josh Brolin's detective pressuring Lucas for bribe money. Plus there's even talk of how Capitalism allows this kind of unchecked exploitation and monopolisation, and how the function of the state is to step in and stop it taking over.
  
  Roberts is doing this on his own with a small team, and the cat and mous game that ensues between the central pair is super engaging, as you long for Lucas to get caught, and when he does, it's deeply rewarding.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It's hardly the most subtle or nuanced piece of filmmaking, but sometimes a blunt instrument is just as effective.
  
  VERDICT: 'American Gangster,' is an engaging game of cat and mouse that brutally exposes systemic corruption and evil.

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