Frank Lucas likes to think of himself as just a plain ol' businessmanan entrepreneur filling a free-market niche. He buys his product direct, cuts out the middleman and passes the savings on to his customers: His product is twice as good at half the price.
Only one problem: His product is heroin.
Frank doesn't use the stuff himself, of course. For him, it's just a conduit to an outsized American Dreamone that allows him to buy a house for his mother, take care of his family and get great seats at championship boxing matches. More than anything, though, Frank craves respect, just as much as his customers crave the "Blue Magic" he sells. And in 1970s New York, there's little to stop a motivated hustler like Frank from making a buck. The police don't want to put guys like him awaythey just want part of the cut. Right?
The exception is Richie Roberts, a flawed cop with an honest streak. He's been tapped to head a New Jersey vice squad to crack down on the region's biggest drug dealers. At first, he figures he'll have to tackle the mafia to do it. But then Richie sees Frank stride into Madison Square Garden for a premiere boxing event with a chinchilla coat and ringside ticketsbetter than the city's known Italian crime lords. It looks like New York's found a new don.
American Gangster is based on the real life of Frank Lucas, who spent 15 years behind bars. But Denzel Washington's Frank seems to be a far cry from the real deal: Onscreen, Frank is erudite, mannered and reasonably reserved. Real-life Lucas claims, in a 2005 New York Magazine story, that he never went to school even for a day and owned 100 garish, custom-made suits. Forget the principles Frank spews in the film, Lucas says he was in it for the money.
One thing they share, though. They're very likeable characters.
"People like me," Lucas told New York Magazine. "People like the f--- out of me."
Indeed. During a family get-together in the film, Frank sits down with a young cousin of hisa natural athlete with a 95-mile-an-hour fastballand asks him why he didn't attend a tryout with the New York Yankees that he set up for him. The cousin tells him that he doesn't want to be a ball player anymore.
"I want to be you," he says.
And that's just the problem inherent with films like American Gangster. Frank, played with a ferocious dignity that could only be delivered by Washington, is a character folks want to be like. He's rebel cool, and the hero worship began even before the film was released: On his upcoming album called (surprise!) American Gangster, rapper Jay-Z stresses the similarities between himself and Frank. His song "No Hook" reportedly contains the line, "Please don't compare me to other rappers/Compare me to trappers/I'm more Frank Lucas than Ludacris." Such is life. If being bad wasn't appealing, nobody would be. American Gangster tries to remind us that Frank is spreading a huge evilits depictions of heroin users are tragic. What it ends up doing, though, is allowing evil to seduce through this character.
WTF?
