By: AJ Hopkins

Before the heady critique starts, here are some indisputable facts about this film:

1) Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are impeccable.

2) The cameo casting of rappers should upset any young black actors looking to break into the business.

3) Even those with the strongest moral compass will find themselves rooting for the bad guy.

4) If every post-Godfather generation has a gangster classic, this is ours, though the lack of notable quotables is disappointing.

5) American gangsters (outside of the government) should be included in American history.

What is it about the gangster flick that drives us to the box office in droves? Is such patronage evidence of society’s continued downward spiral? Are shoot-em-ups the modern extension of Shakespearean violence? Personally, like all art that I voluntarily consume, I look to gangster flicks to see myself.

No, I do not see myself as a gangster. I do, however, see myself as each of us should — as an individual who faces day-to-day challenges and is forced to choose one course of action out of many that are presented. You probably have an idea in your head about what you would do at your most desperate moment. May God forbid a day where you face empty bellies and mouths with only lint-filled pockets and pent-up rage. You likely have not been forced to your last dime, but The Godfather’s Vito Corleone, Scarface’s Tony Montana, and presumably American Gangster’s Frank Lucas have — yet you can live your fantasy through them and go home entertained and bullet-wound free.

As audience members, we have to presume that Lucas’ story is built on any of those previous factors of desperation because aside from a few frames of his family’s meager country existence and a two-line recollection of a tragic childhood memory in the film’s final act, we are not led to see just how we got here. If there is an oath to the brotherhood of gangster flicks, this is a commandment that should never be broken. Unfortunately, this is where Gangster fires a blank.

When I left the theater last Friday night, my brain was on the verge of exploding due to the questions and themes that were running rampant in my mind. Thanks to New York Magazine’s coverage earlier that week, I knew that Lucas and rival druglord Nicky Barnes were both still alive today (Barnes, too, turned stool pigeon for the ‘feds’). Yet, I wondered what was on Frank’s mind when he stepped out of jail and into the nineties. Did he have any remorse or regrets for the lives he had destroyed? Did he care that his wife had left the country? At two and a half hours, extending the film beyond its trite epilogue to answer these questions would have been sinful. The work of exposing Lucas’ measure as a man should have been done throughout the film and replaced the mere caricature of a black man enjoying good-life spoils that we are given. If I had wanted to see that, I would have stayed home and found some old Cash Money videos on YouTube.

To be sure, I enjoyed the experience of the movie; premiere night hype is a drug in its own right. Yet, my thug still was not justified, so I started my seasonal viewing of The Godfather Trilogy over the weekend. In addition to being quality cinema, the Trilogy is great background noise for afternoon house chores. I was tying up a trash bag when my ears caught a line that I had heard before, but struck a dissonant chord this time:

“In my city, I would try to keep the traffic in the dark people, the colored. They’re animals anyway so let them lose their souls.”

This ‘traffic’ refers to the flow of heroin and it is in this scene where the Five Families who controlled the Mafia recognized the financial upside of the narcotics business and were making pact to keep their involvement “respectable” — or at least not destructive to their own people. This moment stopped me cold in my tracks.

It was not new knowledge that the Mafia had had a hand in the injection and spread of heroin in Black and Hispanic communities — Gangster does give us that clue. Sadly, the way that audiences come to understand the various stages in plot and character development is devoid of subtlety and “ah-ha” moments. We see Lucas commiserating with some Italian dons who (strangely) hardly put up a fight when he co-opts their turfs. We witness Crowe’s altruistic Detective Richie Roberts struggle through his friendship with his boyhood friend-cum-neighborhood dopeman. Yet, these revelations are rendered in the form of open-handed slaps for the audience to ‘get the drift.’ “See! He’s making the Italians mad!” “Oh no! There’s a conflict of interest! See?” For a film that stands in the shadows of many gangster flicks before it and will surely generate Oscar buzz (for Denzel shooting more people, if for nothing else), Gangster does not assume much intelligence or readiness on behalf of its audience.

Following my intrigue, I combed the scripts of each film in the Trilogy for additional mentions of narcotics or Blacks. There are very brief exchanges in each film. In Part II, a member of the Corleone family blasts the rival Rosato family for hiring “spics and niggers” into their ranks, for allowing them to run wild in the drug and prostitution business, and for abandoning the ‘clean’ vice of gambling. In the third installment, Michael Corleone, the series’ protagonist, mocks the playboy don Joey Zasa for being celebrated in the press for his “good heart” as evidenced by his diversity hiring ‘best practices.’ When challenged on whether drugs were being sold in his communities, Zasa did not guarantee that the activity was not occurring, but assured the Five Families that, “he would kill anyone who does.” Even with the gray areas between the fictionalized account of the true-life Lucas and the implied facts of the fabricated Five Families, I believe that audiences could have benefitted from a more creative and skillful manipulation of our imaginations.

What was it that made The Godfather such a triumph? A 1972 review in Time proclaimed, “No American film before The Godfather has ever caught so truly the texture of an ethnic subculture. Director Francis Ford Coppola knows his subject so well that he imparts an almost visceral understanding that does not permit easy judgments.” Exactly.

Am I saying that only Blacks should be permitted to tell stories about Black people? Not so fast. As much as some would hope, there is very little about being Black that auto-magically qualifies one to tell Black stories (which are what exactly? Is Our Stories Films’ Who’s Your Caddy? supposed to represent the race?). Good storytelling is a combination of instinct, homework, and intentions. A bulk of Director/Producer Ridley Scott’s Gangster is based on the journalism of Mark Jacobson, which chronicles his in-depth access to Lucas in the past decade. As a journalist, I respect Scott’s choice and jealously admire Jacobson’s “gangsta” in seeking out Lucas and his story. Yet, when in the recent Lucas-Barnes interview, I read the question, “Which one of you guys had the best dope?” all mystery about intention was solved. Even Jay-Z commented on the shortcomings of the film’s storyline in his recent performance of his own Gangster effort (which he calls his personal “indie film”) on VH1. I suppose the game is to be sold and not to be told, after all.

Click for Jay-Z’s live performance of “Sweet” on VH1’s Storytellers and visit storytellers.vh1.com for more.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 8:42 am and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.