Gangster RapI love the many parts that make up this movie. Denzel Washington is one of the finest American actors working today, Russell Crowe is a powerful persona and Ridley Scott has a strong and stylish vision as a director. So when it came time for this film to be released, I was ready for another masterpiece that would re-establish Scott as one of the great directors, and hopefully get him the Oscar that was denied when his film Gladiator won Best Picture. I was expecting something great. What I got was something good. Not great, and that is disappointing.
Denzel Washington plays the notorious, and factual, Harlem drug trafficker Frank Lucas whose Scarface-esque story built him up from a low level chauffer for a previous drug lord to a powerful man who controlled nearly the entire heroin flow heading in across One Hundred and Tenth Street. Russell Crowe is Ritchie Roberts, he’s a too-polished police officer who heads the newly formed narcotics unit in New York City. The film goes back and forth showcasing the lives of these two men, and the stark contrasts they share: Lucas is criminal and drug runner, but has a strong sense of family values; Roberts is so clean of a cop that he alienates himself when he refuses to pocket nearly a million dollars found in a truck, but has a horrific personal life that is riddled with divorce, custody battles and questionable friends. So it is inevitable that the lives of these two men eventually cross, and they meet each other face to face.
The movie tries so hard to have itself be the next great American crime drama, to follow in the footsteps of The Godfather and The Departed. Sadly, it never gets there. The film, at many points, seems so overwhelmed by its central character, that if forgets to actually show him. It bombards the audience with work and his process for handling delicate situations, but the actual man who is Frank Lucas is never fully exposed. We get some spots of his sociopathic ways, but then he subsides into his businessman suit. However, Washington does do an outstanding job at taking a character who appears to be so limited and churning out as much as he can, as well as making him as rich of a personality as he can be. Russell Crowe does a good job at taking this character that is very opposite from Lucas, and making him a person just as interesting. Most of the time, his character would be a useless subplot that is only to pad the movie’s long length, but Crowe makes us believe in this character and sympathize for him. The two do excellent work as they perform solo, and their confrontation at the end of the film is the stuff that cinematic excellence is made from.
Ridley Scott is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, but I couldn’t help but think something was missing here. Scott is a director that has normally relied on style, such as in Gladiator, Alien and Black Hawk Down. However, the film feels more structured, and I kind of resent that. Any director could have done that, but I wanted Scott to use his touches to flush out the swaying camera moves and peculiar angles. Not much of that is present here. It by no means diminishes Scott’s ability to direct a movie, but it does set a different mood. Perhaps it is also Steve Zallian’s script, who writes like he’s still trying to dry up his tears from the panning of his remake to All the King’s Men. The script is layered with good characters, but all their dialogue feels labored. Hopefully, Zallian will remind us that he is still the Oscar-winning writer of Schindler’s List, but it hasn’t happened yet.
This film has been hyped, hyped, hyped for Oscar attention, and it does live up to some potential, but not all. Washington is the star player here, but Scott is disappoints by not providing a film that is on his level of prestige. This isn’t a bad film. It is very good. But when you’ve spent the better part of six months waiting for the next American classic, it’s a little saddening to find the next American popcorn flick. *** / ****; GRADE: B.
No comments:
Post a Comment