American Gangster

There's a Blockbuster a block away from my apartment and about once a month they do a four for $20 DVD sale. I am unable to pass this up even though the inevitable time crunch happens and I have stacks of unwatched DVD's sitting around (a good portion of which are some random titles that I picked up to fill up my four). This is one step in a continual effort to get through the monstrosity.

There is a fundamental flaw with this film, but I'm not even sure you can blame the film for it. Before getting into that I want to waste five hundred words talking about other stuff. This story about the rise and fall of drug kingpin Frank Lucas in 1970's New York is an interesting one, and generally makes for a watchable film. However given the talent involved it would have been shocking if the film hadn't been at least marginally entertaining (Russel Crowe, Denzel Washington, Ridley Scott, that chick who plays the hard edged doctor from Private Practice - and don't start with me I know its a horrible show but they shoot it rightwhere I used to live in Santa Monica so I occasionally like to watch ten or fifteen minutes to see my old hood. Don't judge me). However the film is kind of schizophrenic trying to all at once be a traditional police procedural, an in depth character study of two' singularly driven' men, a glitzy goodfellas-esque look at gangster life, and, for the last twenty minutes in particular, a clumsy attempt to make a statement about race. The film never really settles on a consistent tone and as a result left me feeling disjointed, and a little unsure of the ultimate point.

None of this is really the major drawback though, that can be summed up in two words - The Wire. After having seen police work and the drug war dealt with in the most detailed and powerful level imaginable over the course of that show's five seasons, its impossible to watch a film dealing with similiar themes, but in a more superficial manner, without realizing what's lacking (it doesn't help that one of the first scenes of American Gangster features one of the key actors from The Wire which immediately got me making comparisons). I think American Gangster is the first film I'd watched since I finished my Wire binge last summer that tried to 'seriously' deal with the drug trade, and I wonder if the show will have ruined any other films of this genre for me as well. If anything I think that these types of films would be better off not focusing on the trade, or its effects on people, because there's no way they can ever approach the depths or pathos of the show. Rather, like the aforementioned Goodfellas, they need to find something else for me to grab onto (chracters, plot, explosions, power ballads) so I don't spend the whole time comparing it to arguable the most important show in television history (On the road with Huel Howser being excepted of course).

Anyway I didn't mean to turn this post into another slobberfest for The Wire (yes I did, go rent it already if you haven't seen it), American Gangster isn't a bad film, its watchable, but it definitely isn't a great one and I'm not sure you need to go out of your way to burn the two and a half plus hours necessary to watch it.