In the late 1960s and early 1970s Hollywood studios catered to black America. Films such as "Shaft," "Super Fly," "Foxy Brown," "Black Caesar," "The Mack," "Cleopatra Jones," "Black Lolita," "Cotton Comes to Harlem," "Truck Turner," "Coffy," "Gordon's War," "Blacula," "Blackenstein," "Across 110th Street," "The Black Godfather," "The Black Gestapo," "Don't Play Us Cheap" and more than 100 other features dealt in one way or another with the African-American experience or the perceived African-American experience. Most of the movies were crime dramas or action adventure films. The genre even had its own name: Blaxploitation.
There was also an effort to take themes upscale with Westerns such as "Buck and the Preacher," starring the icons Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, and with musicals like "Lady Sings the Blues" featuring the Diva herself, Miss Diana Ross. In fact, for a brief time, the Hollywood studios were handing African-Americans the keys to the store. Poitier directed "Buck and the Preacher" and Miss Ross was really controlling the production of her film. You also had sharp, under-appreciated satirical comedies such as "Watermelon Man" and "Putney Swope." And no discussion of this invaluable output can be complete without a tip of the hat to Melvin Van Peebles legendary "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," which came kicking and screaming into public consciousness in 1971 and still gets people riled up.
A number of the movies had in their title a word or words that are now politically incorrect to say, write, or print -- depending on who's doing the saying, writing, or printing. Are we really not allowed to note the cinematic value of "The Legend of Nigger Charley" from 1972 or "The Spook Who Sat By the Door" from 1973? Interestingly, movie posters from the era as well as newspaper advertisements printed the now-offensive words. Or were they always offensive? Is it a case of "those were the days," or is it "the more things change, the more they stay the same"? Is that why these productions were called "exploitation films"? And what killed the genre? Certainly the public moved on, including the African-American moviegoing public. Tastes changed. But frankly, I'd like to think it was the dreadful 1978 motion picture version of "The Wiz" that did in Blaxploitation. If not, then it was certainly "Disco Godfather" in 1979.
This brings me to the new release "American Gangster," which is what Blaxploitation movies would have looked like if they had megamillion-dollar budgets. It is, quite simply, an exciting and fascinating feature. It is both a gritty crime melodrama and a serious test case for how people react to what they're seeing. Does it celebrate a ruthless criminal? Or is it, as Hitchcock once noted about Ingrid Bergman tediously pondering her character's motivation, "only a movie," albeit one based on a real-life person?
In 1970s Harlem -- the Blaxploitation era -- a truly lethal, up-from-poverty drug kingpin shoots first and then politely asks his henchmen to clean up the mess. Does he really kill a guy because he put his drink down on a table but didn't set it on a coaster? And is it an astonishing act of hubris to call the movie "American Gangster"? What about Don Vito Corleone? To some, he's the quintessential American gangster. I'll let you sort that out after you've seen the picture.
Directed by Ridley Scott, who seems to be a director who really enjoys his bad guys, and written by Steve Zaillian from a magazine article by Mark Jacobson, the movie follows powerful Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, whose heroin was the purest of the pure. Lucas was a dangerous man to the ruling elite. Not only was he getting wealthy from selling illegal narcotics but he was also much beloved by the very citizens to whom he sold the dope. Free turkeys for Harlem residents during the holidays? Just a promotional gimmick but certainly one that had to have been admired by other capitalists in the area. "American Gangster" presents the notion that Lucas was just doing what everyone else was doing, which was getting a piece of the action. It really does come down to which capitalist enterprise is the most acceptable, doesn't it? If you had the cash, Lucas had the high.
As Lucas rules the roost, in a seductive performance by Denzel Washington, a parallel story is told about the men in blue. Not a lot of women wore blue in those days. In New York in the 1970s crime was big business. But Lucas wasn't the only notorious figure. Dirty cops also were getting their piece of the pie. Ambition and entrepreneurial flair is colorblind. Of course, Lucas' piece was a little bit bigger. Enter Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, an honest man, a hardworking man, a good cop. Think Serpico, but with a more brutish walk and an almost Neanderthal jaw. In Scott and Zaillian's world, Lucas and Roberts will not meet for most of the movie. Their stories will slowly inch together. It's a creative decision I disagree with but it's certainly not enough to derail the film. It's simply that we get the message: Lucas bad. Roberts good. Also along for the ride is Cuba Gooding Jr. as Nicky Barnes, a rival to Lucas who wears flashier clothes. Think of Lucas as Brooks Brothers and Barnes as Halloween. He's as colorful as a peacock, with a fedora the size of a manhole cover. He also thinks he's pretty smart. He's read Machiavelli, after all. Ah, but did he understand him? And to complicate matters, enter Josh Brolin as Trupo, a corrupt New York detective. Don't laugh at his long, black leather coat. This guy is a villain right out of a Sergio Leone movie. He's strong enough to shake down Lucas. And he practically spits at Roberts. Hatred among these characters helps draw a line in the urban concrete.
Through its 150-plus minutes, "American Gangster" moves toward its conclusion. Blood is spilled along the way, and a lot of heroin is shot up in extreme close-up. Lucas is determined to hold on to his business, and Roberts is just as determined to clean up Dodge. With a gun tucked into his belt, Lucas strolls the streets of his community like a folk hero. He's become a pop culture idol. But you can sense that most of the people fear him, even the folks to whom he gives gifts or monetary help. He admires the Mafia and surrounds himself with relatives he thinks he can trust. His contempt for cops, both good and bad, is obvious.
The sociological question regarding "American Gangster" is this: Does it honor a brutal man, one who, for example, has no qualms about beating a man to a pulp as if it's just one more task on his to-do list? Does the superb film trivialize the nasty business in which Lucas finds his fortune? People have asked the same questions about "The Godfather." Do these very violent movies dignify evil? Does the very nature of "movie entertainment" inherently make these cruel, inhuman characters likable? Take Tony Soprano, for example. Did you want him to live or die? Did you hate him or did you love him? Movies don't make heroes out of villains. Audiences do.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 5 2007 |