message in the movies By Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

             
American Gangster Rated R
Directed by Ridley Scott.  Starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe

Photos © Universal Pictures
For a few decades in the last century the Hays Code required that any Hollywood film featuring someone doing criminal acts would have to eventually show that character paying the price for their crimes, so that it would be clear to everyone that “crime does not pay”.  Since the 1970s we have seen dozens of films based on true stories of crime, and truth is stranger than fiction.  Gangsters are colorful characters with families; policemen and law enforcement agents are corrupt; and everyone gets a chance to walk the gray line between good and evil.  In American Gangster, we have Frank Lucas  (Washington), an African-American crime boss who is the epitome of the upward-bound entrepreneur, buying the best quality directly from the supplier, avoiding the middleman, and passing the savings on to his customers.  Unfortunately, his product is heroin from Thailand, and hundreds of lives will be destroyed by his commerce. His adversary is Richie Roberts (Crowe), a brutally ethical police detective whose moral high ground does not exclude extramarital affairs.  Roberts is also going to night school to become a lawyer – a plot point that will come into play later in the movie.  Richie is given the opportunity to put together a team of detectives to track down an insidious heroin supplier and, in time, to lead him to Frank Lucas himself.  The two men’s stories develop along parallel lines until they finally meet one another in the last hour of this 2 ¾ hour film.  Everything about American Gangster is first-rate, including stellar turns from Washington and Crowe, but the way things eventually wrap up is less than satisfying.  That’s life for you.  Bad guys are charismatic, good guys are flawed, and justice is forever fleeting, as justice is wont to do.  American Gangster is outspoken about the bad things that happen on screen and also honest about the relentless nature of sin.  These topics are not particularly original, but maybe the sin is.

Pitchfork Rating: Three halos.  (A well-made and entertaining film based on a real life crime bust, hampered only by the confused morality of our times.)   Four pitchforks.  (Scenes of extreme violence and mayhem, nudity, drug use, profanity and brief sex scenes.)

                       
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