Even if you’re not a fully-fledged member of the hiphoperati, odds are, you’ve heard of Frank Lucas, the Harlem druglord who, by his own estimation grossed US$1 million a day selling heroin on 116th Street during the late ’60s and ’70s. An innovator, Lucas cut out the mafia middlemen by buying directly from South East Asia and smuggling the merchandise in the coffins of American servicemen.
According to Bronx folklore and countless songs by wannabe pimps, Lucas is badass number one, a real life Sweet Sweetback criminal superhero who cheated the Man and walked the streets of Dopetown in an original gangsta chinchilla hat and coat. Ridley Scott’s version of events desaturates that particular legend, offering instead an intriguingly sedate portrait of the Gangster As Businessman.
As essayed by Denzel Washington, Lucas is certainly capable of violence. A hick from South Carolina, he circles quietly and purposefully about the scene as he makes the transition from henchman to gentleman druglord. But even when he kills, American Gangster presents his actions like a logical, capitalist decision that a particularly gutsy boardroom might make.
His entrepreneurial instincts make him unpopular with rivals, particularly the Italians, but Lucas remains invisible to the authorities. The narcotics squad simply cannot believe that a black guy has the smarts to put such an operation together. And here we find the real villains of the piece. At a time when over half the narcotics division are taking bribes to look the other way, Russell Crowe essays the One Good Cop – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – determined to take down the Whole Damn System.
If you were expecting Scarface or I’m Gonna Get You Sucka, you might well be disappointed by the stately progress of America Gangster. There is only one big shoot out to speak of and nobody is wearing boots with dead goldfish in them. But there’s a fine logic to Sir Ridley’s fly-not-superfly aesthetic choices in an age when a random glance at MTV Base provides endless images of zoot suits and platform shoes. Indeed, it’s impossible not to read American Gangster as a kind of corrective. The romance is, of course, still there. Denzel’s Lucas is far from hateful company. But the meticulous restaging of Lucas’ operations and Crowe’s investigation ensure that, like the similarly procedural Zodiac, the drama is in the details until the final, exhilarating fifteen minutes when you realise what everybody is really up to. If that isn’t enough to win you over then the final shot, a real lingering doozy of an image, should do the trick.