American Gangster is a
crime film directed by
Ridley Scott adapted from a
New York magazine story "The Return of
Superfly", by
Mark Jacobson, starring
Denzel Washington and
Russell Crowe.
Washington portrays Frank Lucas, a real-life gangster
from Harlem
who smuggled
heroin into the United States on American
service planes returning from the Vietnam
War. Crowe portrays
Richie
Roberts, a detective attempting to bring down Lucas' drug
empire. Filming was done on location in New York City.
American
Gangster was released in the United States and Canada on
November 2, 2007. The film was also nominated for two
Academy Awards, including a notable
Best Supporting Actress nomination
for
Ruby Dee who appears on screen for less
than 10 minutes.
Plot
Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson (Clarence Williams III), a disciplined
and intelligent gangster, runs much of
Harlem and imparts his wisdom onto his former driver
turned right-hand man, Frank
Lucas (Denzel
Washington). Johnson dies of a
heart attack in
1968, at an electronics store. Frank dislikes the new,
flashy gangsters and decides to take control.
Meanwhile,
Newark Police
Department detective Richie Roberts (
Russell Crowe) is juggling a failing marriage,
late-night
law school classes, and his
police career. When Richie and his partner, Javier Rivera, discover
nearly $1 million in unmarked bills in a car, Richie resists
temptation and turns the money in. His rare honesty makes him a
hated member of his precinct, causing his partner to be exiled from
the force, while Richie's rampant womanizing behavior and
undercover double life leads his wife to seek a divorce and custody
of their son.
After his exiled partner dies from overdosing
on "Blue Magic", a relatively new and powerful type of heroin being sold for less money than its
competition, Richie's honesty catches him a break when his superior
Captain Lou Toback (Ted Levine) puts him
in charge of a newly created task force to stop major drug
trafficking in Essex County, New Jersey
by going after the actual supplier, rather than the
middle-men. Richie handpicks honest cops and gets to work on
finding who is supplying Blue Magic.
Lucas had a different way of selling pure heroin, he was the only
one selling it at a lower price than the competitors and it was
pure heroin. He creates a brand “Blue Magic” and with an great
monopoly on quality product, Frank quickly
makes a fortune and buys several nightclubs and apartments.
He moves
his family from North
Carolina
to New Jersey
, where he purchases a large estate for his humble
mother. His five brothers are enlisted as his lieutenants in
the drug trade – forming “The Country Boys” who work together to
traffic and sell dope on Harlem streets. During his rise, Frank
meets and falls in love with Eva, a
Puerto
Rican beauty queen.
Through his discipline, organization, and
willingness to kill those in his way, Frank quickly rises to the
top of the Harlem drug and
crime scene.
As Frank's business prospers, he makes a point of operating quietly
and dressing with a modest conservatism both as a sign of strength
and to avoid attracting the attention of the law. However, Frank
disregards this habit for his wife for one ostentatious night out,
attending the
Fight of the
Century between
Muhammad Ali and
Joe Frazier, in a gaudy
chinchilla fur coat and hat, along with a
ringside seat. As it happens, Roberts is on duty observing the
event and sees this unknown, but obviously wealthy person
associating with high-level criminals, as well as having better
seats than the
Italian Mafia. Roberts
becomes suspicious, and he begins to investigate this unknown (to
him) figure in New York
organized
crime.
Even as Frank realizes he has exposed himself to police scrutiny,
he must make deals with the Mafia, in this case
Lucchese crime family Mob boss Dominic
Cattano (
Armand Assante), and fend
off corrupt
NYPD detectives, such as Det. Trupo
(
Josh Brolin), who attempt to
extort and threaten him. Trupo's dislike of Frank is
capped when his prized
Shelby Mustang
is bombed before his eyes. Frank must also contend with local crime
figure
Nicky Barnes (
Cuba Gooding, Jr.), who is taking some of
Frank's product, diluting it himself, and selling it under Frank's
"Blue Magic" brand name. Unidentified assassins try to kill Frank’s
wife, further destabilizing him and threatening his marriage.
Things
take a turn for the worse when Frank sees the U.S. military
vacating Vietnam
, Fall of Saigon, which in turn cuts off his
primary heroin transportation. His Kuomintang supplier
sympathetically tells him "Quitting while you are ahead...is not
the same as quitting."
Richie catches another break when his men witness Frank's cousin
shooting a woman. They use the driver’s predicament to get him to
wear a wire. The wire allows Richie and his task force to discover
when a plane carrying drugs is landing, though Richie is ordered to
cease his search of the coffins by a racist Federal agent who
dismisses his assessment of Lucas' dangerousness and ends up
snarling an
anti-Semitic slur at him.
Meanwhile, Trupo leads his band of police officers to Frank's
mansion where they take Frank's emergency cash supply. Frank is
enraged at what Trupo did, and sets out to kill him and other
associated officers. Frank's mother pleads that he not go through
with it, and Frank decides not to murder Trupo. When the plane
lands, Richie and his men follow the drugs into Newark's projects
and obtain a warrant. A huge group of police and detectives attack
the drug apartments en masse and a large shootout ensues. Steve
Lucas, Frank's nephew who gave up a promising baseball career with
the
New York Yankees and began work
for his uncle dies in the shootout. Frank is at church when the
bust goes down, but he is arrested after the service ends. Richie
meets with Frank and makes it clear to him that he has enough
evidence to put him away for the rest of his life. He then tells
Frank that he has a chance of doing a shorter term in jail if he
helps him in the case.
With no other options, Frank decides to provide names of numerous
other criminals, including his and Richie’s common enemies: corrupt
NYC detectives. Numerous corrupt cops are arrested, and a
distraught Trupo kills himself to avoid arrest. Richie, having
passed the bar exam, prosecutes Frank. In the end, three quarters
of the NYPD are arrested and convicted of drug trafficing. Some
time after the Lucas trial, he eventually leaves the prosecutor's
office, and becomes a defense attorney. The first client he takes
is Frank. Because of his cooperation, Frank receives a relatively
light sentence of 15 years rather than the original 70. He is
arrested in 1975. At the film’s end, he steps out of jail in 1991
significantly older and out of place.
Cast
Development
In 2000,
Universal Pictures and
Imagine Entertainment
purchased the rights to "The Return of Superfly", a
New York magazine story by
Mark Jacobson about the rise and fall of the
1970s heroin kingpin
Frank
Lucas. In 2002, screenwriter
Steven
Zaillian brought a 170-page script to director
Ridley Scott, who expressed interest in making
two films from it. However, Scott did not immediately pursue the
project. In November 2003, Universal and Imagine entered
negotiations with
Brian De Palma to
direct
Tru Blu, with a script by Zaillian based on Frank
Lucas. Zaillian interpreted the story as one of "American business
and race", focusing the script thematically on corporate business.
Production was initially slated for a spring 2004 start. In March
2004, the studio entered new negotiations with
Antoine Fuqua to direct, as well as
Denzel Washington to star in the film as
Frank Lucas. The following May,
Benicio
Del Toro entered negotiations to star as Detective Richie
Roberts, who brought down Lucas. Production of
Tru Blu was
reset to begin in early fall 2004, with the film slated for a
release date of June 3, 2005. In September 2004,
Dania Ramirez entered negotiations to
join the cast of the film, now titled
American
Gangster.
Universal Pictures reported that it greenlit
American
Gangster with a budget of $80 million, which escalated to $93
million, with $10 million for development costs and $3 million for
the delay of the production start date. Sources close to the
director insist that the budget was $93 million from the beginning.
The studio also sought for
American Gangster to be
produced in Toronto rather than New York City to save money, but
Fuqua resisted the re-location. The studio's parent company
General Electric received
tax credits in New York City, so production was
moved to the city. The move, however, inflated the budget to $98
million. Fuqua's camp insisted that it was seeking ways to reduce
the budget, but the studio contended several aspects of the project
under him. The director had wanted to film a Vietnam sequence in
Thailand and to cast notable names such as
Ray Liotta and
John
C. Reilly in minor roles. To add
to the studio's budgetary concerns, Fuqua was rewriting the script
during the preproduction process. The director also did not have a
shot-list, final locations, and supporting actors signed to
initiate production.
Fuqua was fired on October 1, 2004, four weeks before principal
photography would begin. The studio cited creative differences for
the director's departure. After Fuqua's departure, the studio met
with
Peter Berg to take over directing
the film, and Denzel Washington had approved of the choice. Due to
the search potentially escalating a budget already in the
US$80 million range and the difficulty
in recouping the amount based on the film's subject matter,
Universal canceled production of
American Gangster, citing
time constraints and creative elements for its reason. The
cancellation cost the studio $30 million, of which $20 million went
to Washington and $5 million went to del Toro due to their
pay or play contracts.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Fuqua's ambition to
produce the film was primarily based on the prospect of an
African-American director and an African-American actor leading a
big-budget film that would potentially be nominated for
Oscars.
In March 2005,
American Gangster was revived as Universal
and Imagine entered negotiations with
Terry
George to revise Zaillian's script and direct the film, which
was to be financed with a target budget of US $50 million. The
following May,
Will Smith was approached
to replace Washington as Frank Lucas, though an offer would be held
off until George completed his revision of the script. After a
meeting between Scott and Zaillian on another project, Zaillian
brought the project up again with Scott, who decided he was ready
to do it. Producer
Brian Grazer and
Imagine executive Jim Whitaker decided against pursuing George's
attempt and to return to Zaillian's vision. In February 2006,
Ridley Scott entered talks with the
studio to take over
American Gangster from George,
returning to Zaillian's draft as the film's basis. Washington
returned to his role as Lucas, and
Russell
Crowe was attached to star as Roberts.
Production
Writing
Scott had discussed the script with actor
Russell Crowe as they worked on
A Good Year (2006) in France, and they
sought to take on the project. The director reviewed Zaillian's
script, Terry George's rewrite, and a revision by
Richard Price during the project's
incarnation with director Antoine Fuqua. Scott preferred Zaillian's
approach and chose to follow it. In realizing the project, the
director encountered a challenge in the script since the characters
Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts do not encounter each other until
twenty minutes before the end of the film. The director sought to
flesh out the private universes of the characters that would evolve
and have scenes cut between the two characters to provide a
balance. Elements like Frank Lucas's interaction with his family
and Richie Roberts' dysfunctional marriage were written to add to
the characters' backgrounds.
Casting
Scott chose to direct
American Gangster based on the
paradoxical values of Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts. The film
focuses a bit on the comparatively ethical business practices of
the "wicked gangster" and the womanizing and failed marriage of the
"do-gooder" police detective. Washington, who was not normally a
fan of gangster films, chose to portray Lucas when he saw "the arc
of the character" had ended with prices that Lucas paid for his
actions. Crowe was drawn to the project based on his previous work
with the director on
Gladiator and
A Good Year. Production was slated in
summer 2006. To prepare for their roles, the actors met their
real-life counterparts. Washington acquired Lucas's Southern
accent, and Crowe practiced to match Roberts's manner of speaking
and body language, requesting tape recordings of Roberts to assist
in his preparation. The following March, the studio rehired
Zaillian to rewrite the script for
American Gangster. It
was rumored that Washington got paid another $20 million for when
the project was greenlit again, that rumor proved to be false.
According to Variety, he only signed on for his gross.
Filming
Director Ridley Scott produced
television commercial from the
1960s to the 1980s, which entailed visits to New York City in the
same time period in which the film's story took place. The director
sought to downplay a "Beatles" atmosphere to the film and to
instead create a shabbier atmosphere. Scott described his
perspective of the setting, "Harlem was really, really shabby,
beautiful
brownstones falling apart."
Production and costume design was emphasized, transforming the
location into the rundown streets of upper Manhattan from the late
1960s and early 1970s. Denzel Washington, as Frank Lucas, went
through 64 different costume changes.
The director filmed
American Gangster in 180 locations, an
unusually high number for production, throughout New York's
five boroughs. Approximately
50 to 60 locations were set in Harlem alone. The director also
found several interiors that had been untouched since the 1940s and
despite sanitary concerns, chose to film scenes in these locations.
Frank Lucas's apartment in the movie was filmed at Hilton Hotel New
York in Midtown Manhattan. All the locations in the film were
authentic, with the exception of Frank Lucas' coffee shop, built as
a set at the northeast corner of 122nd St and
Lenox Avenue. Scott found filming in Harlem to
be difficult, describing it as "an area of wide-avenued boulevards"
whose concrete pavement and lack of trees provided poor
opportunities for shooting angles. As well as being filmed in the
five boroughs it was also filmed in Westchester County in
Briarcliff Manor.
Release
Box office performance
Over two weeks before the release of
American Gangster, a
screener for the film leaked online. The
film debuted in the United States and Canada on November 2, 2007 in
3,054 theaters. In its opening weekend in the United States and
Canada,
American Gangster grossed $43,565,115, placing
first in the weekend box office. Brandon Gray of
Box Office Mojo reported that the film had
the fastest start domestically for a crime saga and the film also
had the best opening weekend for Denzel Washington as well as
Russell Crowe. As of April 25, 2009, it has grossed $130,164,645
domestically and $136,300,329 in other territories for a worldwide
total of $266,465,037. This makes the movie very successful as its
budget was $100 million and it recouped over two and a half times
its budget.
Critical reception
The film received generally favorable reviews from critics. At the
review aggregate website
Rotten
Tomatoes, 79% of 199 reviewers approved of
American
Gangster. On the similar
Metacritic,
38 accumulated reviews gave the film an average score of 76 out of
100.
American Gangster was observed as a candidate for the
Oscars based on the film's style and the performance of the actors,
including the possibility of an
Academy Award for Best
Director for
Ridley Scott. In an
interview Lucas "was gushing" about the film and
Denzel Washington's performance; he said
that he felt amazement "at the way he had (him) down." A
New York Post article by
Susannah Callahan stated that Lucas "admitted to sources that 'only
20 percent of the film is true.'" According to the same article
Roberts criticized the film for portraying him in a custody battle
while in real life he never had a child. Roberts criticized the
portrayal of Lucas, describing it as "almost noble."
Sterling Johnson, Jr., a federal judge
who served as a special narcotics prosecutor and assisted the
arrest and trial of Lucas, described the film as "1 percent reality
and 99 percent Hollywood
." Johnson described the real life Lucas as
"
illiterate," "vicious," "violent," and
"everything Denzel Washington was not." Former
DEA agents Jack Toal, Gregory Korniloff, and Louis Diaz
filed a lawsuit against Universal saying that the events in the
film were fictionalized and that the film
defamed them and hundreds of other agents. The
lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
Top ten lists
The film appeared on 50 critics' top ten lists of the best films of
2007.
Awards
Wins
- African American Film Critics
- Best Supporting Actress (Ruby Dee)
Nominations
- Image Awards
- Outstanding Motion Picture
- Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture (Ruby Dee)
Media release
Soundtrack
In 2006
Lyor Cohen's, "The Biz," winner
Greg Calloway got wind of the film and
tried to produce the soundtrack. He presented the idea to
Atlantic Records Chairman
Craig Kallman and A&R Jean Nelson later to
learn it was a Universal Film and that Warner could not take part
in the production of the soundtrack. Between April and May 2007,
composer Marc Streitenfeld recorded the musical score for
American Gangster by using an 80-piece orchestra recorded
in sections as well as acoustic pre-records, performed by
Streitenfeld himself. Additional score material was composed and
recorded by
Hank Shocklee.
The official
soundtrack album for
American Gangster was released by
Def Jam Recordings within a week of the
film's release. In addition to Streitenfeld and Shocklee's score
material, the soundtrack album also features 1960s/1970s period
songs by
blues and
soul musicians such as
Bobby Womack,
The
Staple Singers,
Sam & Dave,
and
John Lee Hooker.
A score album was released by
Varèse Sarabande on February 19,
2008.
Denzel Washington originally pressed for film producer
Brian Grazer to have rapper and Def Jam
president
Jay-Z compile a soundtrack for the
film, but Grazer and director Ridley Scott resisted because they
wanted an authentic 1970s feel to the film. As a result, only two
new vocal songs, both done by soul singer
Anthony Hamilton's in a 1970s
style, were recorded for the film. "Heart of the City (Ain't No
Love)", a Jay-Z song from his 2001 album
The Blueprint, was included in the film's
trailer. Instead of directly recording for the film, Jay-Z released
an album inspired by the film, similarly titled
American Gangster, in
conjunction with the release of the film.
Track listing
- "Do You Feel Me" – 3:56
- "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" – 3:46
- "No Shoes" – 2:24
- "Across 110th Street" – 3:47
- "Stone Cold" – 4:06
- Performed by Anthony Hamilton
- "Hold On I'm Comin'" – 2:31
- "I'll Take You There" – 4:34
- "Can't Truss It" – 4:39
- "Checkin' Up on My Baby" – 2:12
- "Club Jam" – 3:10
- Performed by Hank Shocklee
- "Railroad" – 2:20
- Performed by Hank Shocklee
- "Nicky Barnes" – 3:11
- Performed by Hank Shocklee
- "Hundred Percent Pure" – 2:13
- "Frank Lucas" – 2:40
- Performed by Marc Streitenfeld
Home media release
The film was released on
DVD and
HD DVD February 19, 2008.
The
DVD release of American Gangster includes a
2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition with 19:23 minutes of unseen
footage, which includes an extended ending, the Original Theatrical
Version of the film was also included on the set.
A 3-Disc Collector's Edition will also be released which includes
the 2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition with a bonus disc and a
supplemental collectible 32-page book chronicling the production
period of the film. The bonus disc contains two music videos, one
by
Jay-Z and the other by
Ghostface Killah and various movie specials
seen on TV about the film, it also includes a
Digital Copy of the extended version of the
film.
The film was later released on
Blu-ray Disc
on October 14, 2008, approximately six months after
Toshiba official stopped production of
HD DVD.
The Blu-ray Disc version of the film includes both the Theatrical
and Unrated Extended Edition of the movie on a single 50GB
disc.
Works inspired by American Gangster
The film inspired the rapper
Jay-Z to create a
concept album, also titled
American Gangster. Jay-Z had
been shown the film at an early screening, which had "tremendous
resonance" to him. The rapper recorded tracks that were prompted by
specific scenes in the film. The album
American Gangster
is a rarity among inspired-by albums because only one artist is
recording it, especially a major artist that had no role in the
film.
The New York Times speculated that the album's
release in conjunction with the film would attract young moviegoers
and help Universal Pictures generate profits to recover from the
film's troubled development history.
Licensed merchandise
In November 2007,
Gameloft developed a
mobile
video game based on the movie,
American Gangster.
References
- [1] Wikipedia.
- http://movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=4896
Bibliography
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