American Gangster
18, 156 mins

The title of Ridley Scott’s latest movie is designed to let us know that what we have here is not just another gangster film, but a big, epic, whopper-sized American gangster film. It’s a curious conceit, considering that the best Hollywood gangster films have always been a commentary on America. Never mind. Scott’s film is based on the true story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), who, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, ran the heroin trade in New York, and of the cop, Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), bent on bringing him down.

The most original feature of Steven Zaillian’s screenplay is its neat twist on the idea of moral equivalency. Usually, modern gangster movies take the line that cops and crooks are as corrupt as each other, but here they are as good as each other. Lucas may be a ruthless killer whose trade has destroyed countless lives, but he is shown to be a good man, chasing the American dream.

We see him go from humble chauffeur to very rich businessman, and he does it by hard work, taking risks and selling a superior product (good heroin) at half the price charged by the competition (the mafia). The film gives us only a cursory look at the consequences – dead black people. Instead, it focuses on the fact that he doesn’t take drugs, looks after his family and takes his dear old mum to church on Sunday. He is a man of moral rectitude – just like the incorruptible Roberts, famous in the force for having found $1m in the boot of a car and turned it in. Both are honest men trying to better themselves – Lucas through business, Roberts by studying for a law degree. The real bad guys are corrupt cops such as the menacing Detective Trupo, brilliantly played by Josh Brolin, who cash in on the drug trade.

This setup is a nice change, but it doesn’t make for a gripping drama. Lucas and Roberts have another thing in common: they’re very decent, but very dull. The real Lucas is said to have been a colourful and flamboyant figure, more bling than bland, but here he’s all stern gravitas and quiet suits. And they’ve tried to sex Roberts up by making him a womaniser, but that can’t conceal his dogged decency.

American Gangster is bound to invite comparisons with William Friedkin’s The French Connection. But it lacks that film’s urban grit, realism and style. It’s packed with comments about the USA – the changing face of free enterprise, the growing corruption of police and politics – but its state-of-the-nation address is as familiar and formulaic as its scenes of bloody execution. There was more big-city corruption in Gene Hackman’s snigger, as “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection, than you’ll find in the entire script of American Gangster.

The trouble with Scott is that he has a great eye (with his fastidious attention to detail), but no ear (for dialogue) and not much of a brain (nothing to say about his subjects). His film is constantly straining to achieve a certain epic grandeur, in the hope it can join the special fraternity of great gangster movies that includes The Godfather and Goodfellas. Observations about America keep popping out of characters’ mouths, even when they’re not really appropriate. After an attempt on Lucas’s life, his wife wants them to pack up and leave. He says no: “I ain’t running from nobody – this is America.” It’s unAmerican to go into hiding when the heat is on?

The drama built on the relationship between Lucas and Roberts is never an interesting or clever battle between cop and criminal, as we had between Pacino and De Niro in Heat, or Hackman and “the Frog” in French Connection. Washington and Crowe’s performances are like the film itself: competent, but never inspired. Crowe, in particular, never finds a voice for Roberts – and, if he wasn’t wearing a star of David, you’d never know he was Jewish. Here, in the middle of this big story of city corruption, neither character seems larger than life.

So, Scott’s film never lives up to its overblown title. It’s the work of an accomplished craftsman, one who will always turn out watch-able films, but his days of wowing an audience seem to be over.

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