American Gangster

Director: Ridley Scott

There can be no doubts regarding the appeal of Frank Lucas's story: a Black gangster who rises from nothing to outsmart the Italian mafia lords at the peak of the American civil rights movement, who uses the American presence in Vietnam to smuggle huge quantities of pure heroin into US soil on US military helicopters, who is tracked down and caught by an upright White officer, and who with his evidence helps put behind bars half of New York City's corrupt Narcotics Department officials.

However, Ridley Scott could have easily tripped at half a dozen places. How to convey what Lucas's rise portrays to the Black community, to Harlem, his family and to the Italians? How to get across the utter waste of America's Vietnam War? How to measure the palpable corruption that runs through police ranks? And mark out the danger of being on the streets at such a time?

Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian, working initially on a New York magazine article on Lucas, bring all the worlds together seamlessly. American Gangster is one of the few films to give us a complete idea of the life of two of its main protagonists: Lucas (Washington) and Detective Richie Roberts (Crowe). That the original Lucas and Roberts were associated with the project must have helped.

His clothes, his hair, his house, his eating, his drinking, his affairs, his paunch — just so, telling all about his life in that slight bulge, standing out from the rest of his well-exercised body — mark him out as a man who is ready to go under, but for a mission.

That he finds with Lucas.

American Gangster has been nominated for two Oscars, for art direction and for acting. It's reflective of the strength of the film's performances that the nod for acting has gone to another character, Lucas's mother, played by Ruby Dee. She has few speaking moments in the film, but she brings everything that Lucas represents onto the screen every time she appears.

And everything that she has gone through — in the hovels of North Carolina — in one reflexive slap on Lucas's cheek.