American Gangster (2007)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Loosely based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina, who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War, before being detained by a task force led by Newark Detective Richie Roberts.
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35 films that influenced American Gangster
What critics say influenced American Gangster
A flashy big-budget studio gangster flick that could be viewed as a combination of the black "Scarface" and the Jewish "Serpico."
American Gangster reminds one of The French Connection, The Godfather, Scarface; some have called it Super Fly vs. Serpico -- the list could go on and on, really.
This aspect of American Gangster , plus its 70s New York and New Jersey urban settings, make it evoke The French Connection and Serpico more than The Godfather or Goodfellas .
It's half Serpico and half Goodfellas, telling parallel stories of Frank Lucas (Washington)'s rise to dominance in the drug trade in the '70s, and Detective Richie Roberts' pursuit of Lucas.
The sense that we've seen all this before is inevitable in a film that ripples with references to "Serpico," "Scarface" and "The Godfather."
Movie goers who long for the days of Serpico will be gladdened by the many reminders here, including skuzzy cops on the take (Josh Brolin, a riot of pomade) and cut portions of French Connection powder.
Shaft , The Godfather , The French Connection , Prince of the City , even Apocalypse Now — they come and go in this farrago like bits in an Oscar tribute montage.
Hardly the New York Police Department, portrayed as so totally corrupt that the cops are only too eager to keep the drugs flowing as a way to subsidize summer homes in Florida, which dovetails neatly with other period films like "Serpico" and "Prince of the City."
The better it gets -- and the drama grows in power over its quasi-epic course of 157 minutes -- the more it brings to mind the truly great gangster films of American movie history, starting with "The Godfather" and extending back to such landmarks as "The Public Enemy" and "Scarface."
Shaft , The Godfather , The French Connection , Prince of the City , even Apocalypse Now — they come and go in this farrago like bits in an Oscar tribute montage.
American Gangster reminds one of The French Connection, The Godfather, Scarface; some have called it Super Fly vs. Serpico -- the list could go on and on, really.
This aspect of American Gangster , plus its 70s New York and New Jersey urban settings, make it evoke The French Connection and Serpico more than The Godfather or Goodfellas .
Actually, I'm not at all sure how anyone can watch this film and not recall The Godfather films, Friedkin's The French Connection , De Palma's Scarface , Leone's Once Upon a Time in America , Scorsese's GoodFellas , Joel Coen's Miller's Crossing , "The Sopranos," or even Cronenberg's current Eastern Promises .
The sense that we've seen all this before is inevitable in a film that ripples with references to "Serpico," "Scarface" and "The Godfather."
Shaft , The Godfather , The French Connection , Prince of the City , even Apocalypse Now — they come and go in this farrago like bits in an Oscar tribute montage.
Using his connections, he journeys upriver, like a grunt in Apocalypse Now, to the jungles of Thailand and buys 100 kilos.
In “The Godfather: Part II,” Michael Corleone grows in power and then ravages his family—the thing he most wanted to protect—and we can see him rotting like a dead oak.
American Gangster reminds one of The French Connection, The Godfather, Scarface; some have called it Super Fly vs. Serpico -- the list could go on and on, really.
This aspect of American Gangster , plus its 70s New York and New Jersey urban settings, make it evoke The French Connection and Serpico more than The Godfather or Goodfellas .
Actually, I'm not at all sure how anyone can watch this film and not recall The Godfather films, Friedkin's The French Connection , De Palma's Scarface , Leone's Once Upon a Time in America , Scorsese's GoodFellas , Joel Coen's Miller's Crossing , "The Sopranos," or even Cronenberg's current Eastern Promises .
Scott also makes atmospheric use of the rainy, grayish blues we associate with the ’70s, or rather that we associate with ’70s movies such as “The French Connection.”
The movie is a descendant not just of “The French Connection” but of the raucous blaxploitation romps of the early seventies.
The better it gets -- and the drama grows in power over its quasi-epic course of 157 minutes -- the more it brings to mind the truly great gangster films of American movie history, starting with "The Godfather" and extending back to such landmarks as "The Public Enemy" and "Scarface."
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This aspect of American Gangster , plus its 70s New York and New Jersey urban settings, make it evoke The French Connection and Serpico more than The Godfather or Goodfellas .
Actually, I'm not at all sure how anyone can watch this film and not recall The Godfather films, Friedkin's The French Connection , De Palma's Scarface , Leone's Once Upon a Time in America , Scorsese's GoodFellas , Joel Coen's Miller's Crossing , "The Sopranos," or even Cronenberg's current Eastern Promises .
It's half Serpico and half Goodfellas, telling parallel stories of Frank Lucas (Washington)'s rise to dominance in the drug trade in the '70s, and Detective Richie Roberts' pursuit of Lucas.
Superfly vs. Serpico!At times, "American Gangster" can feel familiar, recalling gangster movie classics like "The Godfather", "GoodFellas" and "Scarface", but this comes with the territory: there aren't that many different ways you can rise through the ranks of the crime world, violently make yourself respected, etc.
AMERICAN GANGSTER Ever since 1990's one-two punch of GoodFellas and Miller's Crossing, it's been mostly downhill for the mob movie, and even acclaimed efforts like Donnie Brasco and The Godfather Part III couldn't light my fire (and, despite the insistence of friends over the years, I have yet to be stirred enough to tackle six seasons of The Sopranos).
In “Goodfellas,” Ray Liotta’s narration revels in the abundant pleasures of criminality, but, as the bad times keep coming, the narration turns anxious and, finally, harrowing.
Watching the trailers for Ridley Scott’s American Gangster it’s hard not to be reminded of Scorsese’s The Departed, the most recently successful Hollywood spin on the world of mobsters versus cops.
James Gray’s “We Own the Night” and director Ridley Scott’s “American Gangster” give two glimpses into the world of New York crime at rarely explored times in the not too distant past, but neither movie would probably get nearly as much attention if not for Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” and its success at reinvigorating interest in the modern crime drama.
One could even goes as far as to expect a big twist at the end, leaving the audience in a state of shock not felt since Leonardo DiCaprio’s brains got spread all over the wall of an elevator last year in The Departed.
The film itself will likely draw comparisons to both “ Scarface ” and “ The Departed ,” but it’s more like “Superfly” meets “Serpico” in its depiction of drugs and police corruption in the 70s.
The Departed-style gritty, violent urban epic.
The consequence is that, unlike the elaborately conceived "double helix" of stories in "The Departed," the characters never feel integrated, and the attractive list of supporting actors - including Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Hawkes, Joe Morton and rappers Common and RZA - goes unexploited.
The sense that we've seen all this before is inevitable in a film that ripples with references to "Serpico," "Scarface" and "The Godfather."
Scott goes so far as to steal from Brian De Palma’s Scarface , itself an imitation of generations of better films.
No one would suggest an actor of Washington’s stature should conform to any gangster prototype, least of all the florid modernism of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in the 1983 remake of “Scarface.”
So it's not a classic, say like "Scarface," the 1983 De Palma film.
If nothing else, "American Gangster" exposes Brian De Palma's "Scarface" — the most wildly popular drug saga among gangster wannabes — as the crude cartoon that it is.
It has neither the lurid bravado of De Palma's "Scarface" nor the intimate grasp of the criminal lifestyle you find in Scorsese or Coppola.
After all, thanks to such films as “Goodfellas,” “Casino” and “Carlito’s Way,” obsessively detailed 1970's-era crime sagas are not exactly the rarest commodity on the big screen and even though it has been impressively mounted, you can’t quite shake the feeling that you have seen it all before, Scott, working from a screenplay by Steve Zaillian, does a good job of capturing the look and feel of the story but what he presents us with is virtually indistinguishable from what people like Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann or Brian De Palma have done in the past.
American Gangster reminds one of The French Connection, The Godfather, Scarface; some have called it Super Fly vs. Serpico -- the list could go on and on, really.
Crowe's paper-shuffling busywork feels perfunctory, compared with Washington's glamorous world with its "Super Fly" affectations, cautionary temptations and complex moral code.
It’s “Super Fly”—which also had a drug-dealer hero—without the cartoon cruddiness and the put-on violence and with an enormous increase of range and detail: How is the drug business actually done?
For years he has been the driver of �Bumpy� Johnson (played twice on film each by Moses Gunn in a pair of Shaft features and Laurence Fishburne in The Cotton Club and Hoodlum and now played briefly by Clarence Williams III) who mentored him like a son right up to the moment of his death espousing on the cultural change that�s happening in the late �60s.
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Visual and thematic references to classics such as "The Godfather," "Once Upon a Time in America" and "The Asphalt Jungle" show that director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian are quite aware of their film's place in history.
As Lucas's mob contact, Armand Assante ("The Mambo Kings," TV's "Gotti") is slick but not sinister.