The gangster film often provides both an imaginative and an accurate account of American history in the 20th century, a turbulent chronicle of violence and corruption in the first nation where organized crime, following the sacred tenets of entrepreneurial capitalism, became big business. The aptly named "American Gangster" follows the reality of history and the truth of its genre, so that its long, dense story reflects both its temporal context and its bloody tradition.

Like most gangster pictures it looks back at the past, viewing a particular time through the lens of an important American form, reinterpreting the facts of its era through the metaphors of its fiction. The movie traces the career of the notorious Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), who practically monopolized the narcotics trade in metropolitan New York in the 1960s and 1970s, at the height of Nixon's war on drugs (another one we lost). It employs some of the same material that inspired such books and films as "The French Connection," "Serpico," and "Prince of the City" - the revelations of pervasive corruption in the New York City police department in the form of systematic bribery and violent criminal conduct, most of it on behalf of the very criminals they pledged to fight.

The movie documents Lucas's rise to power through his elimination of the middle man in narcotics trading - he buys directly from sources in Southeast Asia and transports the heroin using American soldiers and aircraft returning from Vietnam; in the United States he sells a product twice as good as the competition at half the cost. The cleverness of that plan and the organization he constructs around his family make him the richest and most successful criminal in New York, bigger, as he boasts, than the Italians he undersells.

In spite of his enormous success and his massive payoffs to the police, Lucas encounters one stubbornly honest cop, Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), head of a special squad of narcotics detectives in New Jersey, created to investigate only the most important dealers, a commission that leads inevitably to the kingpin himself. The two very different characters occupy the foreground of the picture, which carefully constructs the foundation for a climactic confrontation between them, showing in great detail the different paths they follow, the wide gap between their lives. Emphasizing the genre's traditional connection to history, the director reminds us, through  the television news reports in the backgrounds of almost every scene, of the turmoil that accompanies and perhaps even enables Lucas's rise to power - civil rights marches, the war in Vietnam, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

The movie contrasts the two men through constant crosscutting, showing the disorderly life of the cop, undergoing a difficult divorce, studying law in night school, and suffering the contempt of his colleagues for refusing to steal. Lucas, on the other hand, enjoys a life of luxury, surrounded by a devoted family, faithfully attending church with his doting mother, and earning the respect of the citizens of Harlem. The tubby, unkempt Roberts sweats and fidgets in his public appearances, while the suave, handsome Lucas, beautifully attired in custom-made suits, maintains a graceful aplomb in every situation, demonstrating the traditional cold self command of the successful gangster.

Although his New Jersey accent now and then moves North to New England, Russell Crowe performs surprisingly well as an entirely unheroic cop fighting as many personal as professional problems, dedicated to some unarticulated idea of duty. Confident, charming, attractive, Denzel Washington seems likeable even when committing a string of criminal acts, including a graphic and entirely cold-blooded murder. Both men underplay resolutely, so that in their one sequence together they exhibit an odd connection, as if somewhere underneath it all, they understood and perhaps even resembled each other.

"American Gangster"'s length, its meticulous attention to the details of the gangster's ascent, and its comprehensive approach to history suggest an attempt at something like an epic version of the form, in the style of "The Godfather" films. The movie certainly implies that its subject sums up in himself both the era and the nation, a suitably symbolic figure for his time and place, like it or not. 

American Gangster

(R), directed by Ridley Scott

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