American Gangster

Now, I was really unsure about this movie. Andrew really loves this movie, we even have a framed movie poster of it in our hallway. It was pretty long, so I will try and condense it as much as I can.

Frank (Denzel) is the ganster. He inherits his knowledge and connections and whatnot from his mentor who just passed away. His main avenue of business is selling heroin. Frank is different than all the other gangs out there, and he goes straight to Vietnam and buys directly from the supplier. This is not only cheaper, but also more popular with his customers because he is selling pure heroin. All the other heroin being sold out on the streets in NY is cut, even corrupt cops (Josh Brolin) are cutting heroin to get a profit. (If you didn't know what cutting is, its when you add a bunch of other stuff that's not heroin so that you dilute it. I learned in my Drugs and Behavior class that this is one of the main reasons why people die from heroin. You never know what kind of crap is mixed in with it. Some people even put in rat poison.) Anyway, so his stuff, Blue Magic, is 100% pure heroin and he sells it for cheap. He becomes insanely successful and is living large. He marries Miss Puerto Rico, and moves his entire family from North Carolina to help with the business. He believes that the flashiest man in the room is the weakest man, so he normally has a clean cut appearance and can go unnoticed. Well then his lady buys him this ridiculous chinchilla pimp jacket that he feels obligated to wear. This is the moment that changes everything. This is when people start to notice him and start asking questions about who he is and why is he so rich. The corrupt and the good cops take notice.

Then we have another storyline going on at the same time as this, and that is of Russell Crowe's Character Richie. He is a cop, soon to be attorney, who is basically the last clean cop in the tri state area. His partner looks exactly like Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride. Sadly, his partner was a junkie and ends up dieing from Blue Magic, because it was just too strong for him. This sends Richie on the path to leading a federal investigation over this heroin. It takes years and years before everything is figured out.

Since Frank had such an amazing product, he ended up putting a bunch of other gangs out of business, and so he unbalanced the drug world. So naturally people were likely to start coming after him. On the flip side of that coin, Richie starts asking way too many people way too many questions about Frank and also has a hit put out on him. Finally the cops get lucky and catch Franks cousin who is also his driver attempting murder. So they use him to catch Frank and find the dope. He was using military planes to transport the bricks of heroin from inside the coffins of fallen soldiers. This ended up being a problem once the Vietnam war ended, because there were no more troops there and his whole operation on that end fell apart. Well anyway, the drugs would then be transported through a 'cleaning services' truck to the packaging unit. Well a ton of agents storm on this place and shoot it up all while Frank is in church and doesn't know whats happening. He gets sent to jail, and Richie works with him to put every corrupt cop that was apart of Frank's system  in jail.

This is based on a true story, and I was amazed to see that in the end, because of his cooperation, Frank's 70 year sentence was pushed down to 15 years. He went to jail in the 70's and came out in the 90's. The last few minutes were just of Richie and Frank walking around town, and I can't even imagine how jarring and scary it would be for Frank to be in this new world that he knows nothing about. Let's face it, these two decades are really different. 

Overall  I had a really hard time getting into this movie. From the beginning until like the last 15 minutes the two main characters weren't in a scene with each other. There were two separate storylines going and they slowly blended into one. But the end was really great. I actually was feeling really bad that Frank was going to go to jail. That could have been because it was Denzel though. If there's one thing though that you take away from this movie, is that its very real. There are many close-ups of people shooting up drugs, heads exploding, naked women making drugs and lots of dirty grimy people. For some reason I just have a dislike toward movies where the people always look dirty and sweaty. But hey, that's reality. After like an hour into the movie, Andrew had to give me a little pep talk about how I just have to appreciate the movie for what it is, and so I tried to do just that. It made a huge effort in emphasizing that it was during the Vietnam War and during the Civil Rights Movement throughout the movie, and I always like movies that fit in historically.

Andrew's Closing Thought: Denzel is a beast!

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