From The Godfather to Scarface, business enterprise has been a recurring theme in the so-called Great American Story, someone who started at the bottom and is now, as the poets say, here. Another large part of the American Story, which has been explored by a couple excellent noteworthy films just this past year, is race, and so the story of drug kingpin Frank Lucas sews these threads together in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster.
If the American Dream is about upward mobility, then the gangster’s rise from low level criminal to top of the heap is what dreams are made of, despite—maybe even because of—the necessity to operate outside the law. The protagonist played by Denzel Washington is a businessman, and his nemesis, played by Russell Crowe, is a cop trying to rise in the ranks the same way Lucas does. Their parallel and eventually intersecting storylines make the movie interesting, while the snappy directing by Scott makes it exciting and entertaining.
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Published: Dec 17, 2013 04:15 pm