#80, 11/4 – American Gangster (2007) (tofw)
The great movie mobsters are all quite interesting characters, aren’t they? Edward G. Robinson’s Rico Bandello, James Cagney’s (absolutely insane) Cody Jarrett, and even De Niro’s (interpretation of) Al Capone were all very captivating people. And Denzel’s Frank Lucas is in that very same company, if you ask me.
I liked American Gangster, though probably not as much as I’d hoped. All the same, it was an enjoyable movie with some impressive bits of storytelling (though I admittedly got lost during one important scene early on, and so did the friend I saw it with). I’m especially happy with how it was largely framed inside the issues of organized-crime-as-big-business and police corruption.
Which leads me, of course, to The Wire, a show which deals so beautifully with those two issues. And I don’t know anything about real life Frank Lucas beyond what the film’s epilogue told me, quite honestly, but I think Denzel’s portrayal has (what I would presume are entirely unintentional) shades of Stringer Bell. So it’s kind of funny to me that Idris Elba (Stringer himself) plays someone Lucas has to overcome at the start of the film.
Briefly back to my overall impression, one of these days I’m going to figure out why I love Ridley Scott’s earlier movies and only kinda like his more recent efforts. It’s definitely not a function of when I saw them, since I thought very highly of The Duellists, a movie I only saw for the first time two and a half years ago (see?). I really do want to figure it out. It may be a really simple explanation, but I’d like to figure it out all the same.
(OK, and a totally unrelated bit here. I wandered over to IMDB to see whether Michael Haneke has done anything recently, because I’ve been very, very out of the film loop recently. And what do I see but he’s made a remake of his own Funny Games for the United States with Naomi Watts? That’s gonna go over like a lead balloon. As much as I love Haneke and as brilliant a critique of the Hollywood thriller as I think Funny Games is, that’s got to be one of the most puzzling filmmaker choices I’ve seen in ages. )