The story goes like this: After seeing an advance print of the Ridley Scott heroin-trade epic American Gangster, Jay-Z found himself inspired. The movie details the story of the Vietnam-era Harlem kingpin Frank Lucas, and Jay saw so many parallels between Lucas′s life and his own. Over the course of a few weeks, Jay recorded his own widescreen epic, a concept-album about the rise and fall of a gangster like Lucas, an imagined what-if trajectory for what might have happened to Jay if he’d never left the drug trade.
Apparently, screenwriter Steve Zaillian and director Ridley Scott seem to think so. They’ve taken the story of Harlem drug king Frank Lucas and turned it—and him—into a symbol of pre-‘70s smarts and racially irrelevant success. Then they parallel it with the story of an honest cop vowing to clean up the streets, along with his fellow crooked officers. Add Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe as the leads and the results speak or themselves. Or at least they try too. Overlong by at least 20 minutes, and missing many of the detail that turns such cops and robbers sagas into glorified Greek tragedies, American Gangster is polished filmmaking that frequently misses the inherent spectacle of the story it’s telling. Then it discovers there was very little scope to begin with.
Well, as a concept-album, American Gangster is kind of a wash. That story animates the album, but it doesn’t dictate its movements. Throughout, Jay-Z breaks that narrative whenever he feels like it, taking care to force in all his standbys: The sneering aristocratic death-threats, the breezy uptempo party-songs, the (especially forced) for-the-ladies seduction-song.
Star(s) to watch : Denzel Washington (”The Bone Collector”, “Man on Fire”, “Deja Vu”) as Frank Lucas, Russell Crowe (”3:10 to Yuma”, “Gladiator”) as Detective Richie Roberts, & Josh Brolin (”Hollow Man”, “Mimic”, “Grindhouse”) as Detective Trupo.
Genre : Drama, Gangster.
Release date : November 2, 2007
Official website : http://www.americangangster.net/
Poster : http://movies-update.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/american_gangster-212×300.jpg
Trailer :
