American Gangster
Harlem, 1968. Frank Lucas, black gangsters and “sought”, loves family, pray in church and the guard Bumpy Johnson, a “godfather” who receives petitions in Harlem and distributes turkeys on Thanksgiving Day. Richie Roberts, jew and incorruptible detective in the county of Essex, is divorziando by his wife, he forgot to say prayers and hunts to malavitosi and distributors of turkeys. On the death of Johnson, Lucas, more modern management of the old godfather, succeed in its activities, eliminate opponents and become in a few years a powerful drug bosses. Scavalcando mafia families and rifornendosi heroin directly into south-east Asia, Lucas earn a fortune and attracted the attention of Richie Roberts. Their paths, and parallel opposed, will meet in the ring match of the century: Ali-Frazier. Only one will remain standing, winning the points.
Inside a photograph livida and bluish, under a sky that rains rain and snow, you face two armies: on the one hand the gangsters and corrupt police officers of the Special Narcotics Unit, the other agents Roberts, “pure” as heroin spacciata by Lucas. On the one hand chaos, the other red.
As in Gladiator the provision of “armies” of the first battle expresses a different vision of the world: the planning of a domain (check of drugs on the market 116ma road) and the “revolt” against the aggression of the rulers. Even this time Ridley Scott has the urgency to tell the story of two antagonists who, as often happens in his movies, are a double of: Frank and Richie as Maximus and Commodus, or further back in time and filmography of the director, as knights Duelists D’Hubert and Féraud. Two destinies cross chiasmici two paths: Frank falls inside (or salt on the ring) to become a leading and claim for itself the “American dream” of Luther King, Richie, diligent viewer, assists its representation on the stage became universal.
Ridley Scott brings back from Europe and brings forward in the draft States cinema entertainment seized, which feeds mainstream art, literature hard-boiled, comics, advertising spots and architectural magazines. Mutuati the fendenti metal Duelists and Gladiator with shots sibilant guns and automatic rifles, American Gangster is an attempt to show the microcosm of Frank Lucas as the metaphor of a macrocosm: U.S. company born from the violence of the border, the extermination of the Indians and slave labour. Violence which remains a constant of this company. We are in the 70s and History in the film bursts Scott returning the hallucination of Vietnam, the temperature of the conflict and interests around the conflict. Frank Lucas is a black South that builds a personal and abnormal version of a successful American history, which replaces the “father” under the command and that is the rise of a generation against another: old-new America, old - new “Mafia” (Lucas acquires the modus operandi of the mafia structure, using its business in the five brothers and many cousins). The same Frank will, in the frame and significant, the surface of aggressive next generation, the next generation represented (but disembodied) by rampant hip-pop. The “curtain” of the prison closes behind the old criminal to be discarded inside vampirizzare from new hordes of enfants terribles.
Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington are Richie and Frank: heavy and massive bodies at odds with faces in which the expression passes for hints slight, imperceptible ripples, lines that move just filling the frame without moving a muscle. Players certainly think that their talent almost inaccessible.
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