American Gangster

So it’s taken me a week to get around to reviewing “American Gangster” the movie. In my defense, I had planned on possibly seeing it a second time to get a better feel for how good it was (see the sacrifices I make for you, the reader), but instead took a two and a half hour nap. So we’re going on my memory of a week ago (hooray concussions!).
After seeing it once, I think “American Gangster” can be considered one of the classics of the genre. It had a lot of elements of “Heat” in that you’re actually rooting for the hero and the anti-hero at the same time. Frank Lucas had that Michael Corleone vibe to him: cool and calm most of the time, that could turn into a violent streak in a second if you fucked with him.
“American Gangster” went more into the business side of the drug game than any movie before it. I loved the scene where Lucas is talking to Nicky Barnes about his “brand name”. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m reading BusinessWeek all the time and the Wall Street Journal but this stuff really appealed to me. The cutting the market price with a superior product. Integrating your supply chain. It could have been any business, except this one was heroin.
And plus we also had the most underrated scene you can have in a drug movie: the one where they show them cutting up the product. You know why I love these scenes? Because you’re guaranteed to see titties. I think this should be mandatory in every drug movie. Because who doesn’t like to see people working half naked?
The one thing I could have done without? The needle scenes. For some reason a doctor can do anything to me (Need to burn my skin so you can do stitches? Sure. Going to re-locate my finger with no anesthetic? That’s fine. Electroscan my head? Think I give a fuck?), but if I have to witness any blood, needles, etc. on other people, I freak out. That’s why being a doctor was out of the question for me. So if my mom ever tells me that if I became a doctor, my brothers would have followed (a la Mrs. Lucas) I can tell her why I didn’t and why I decided heroin sales was a better career move.
The best thing I can say about this movie is that at two and a half hours, it almost seemed too short. I didn’t like how they just wrapped everything up at the end, like, “oh, he put away half the NYPD SIU.” I thought they could have gone more in depth on that.
They’re this lady that I work with who has gotten all into the actual Frank Lucas stuff as I have. She’s all into how he grew up: the KKK killing his cousin for looking at a white woman, him being on a chain gang, him escaping jail. I’ve been more into him afterwards. How the detective who chased him down because his defense attorney. How the two of them are friends to this day. So with that I’m presenting the best idea The Barney Show will probably ever have:
A sequel. Not just any sequel, a Godfather II style sequel. Two stories in one movie. One is him in North Carolina, the shit he saw down there that hardened him. Him in Harlem driving Bumpy Johnson around. The other part, him and the detective bringing down half of NYPD. His appeals. Them kicking it at Frank’s house in 2003. Tell me you wouldn’t watch that. If any studio is reading this (odds: 1,000,000 to 1. “So you’re saying there’s a chance?”) feel free to take this idea. I don’t want any money off of this idea, just make this movie and I’ll be happy enough.
I’ll try and watch “American Gangster” again and put it in its proper perspective. But for now, just know that it’s a definite Barney Classic.