More on Masculinity and Wars: My Review of American Gangster (Spoilers)

The swagger, that signature walk from Denzel. I'm thinking of that scene from Malcolm X when he gathered his Nation of Islam posse in the streets to inquire about a case of police brutality. It was the moment when Malcolm showcased that he was an important man, a man of influence, a dangerous man.

Sigh. My adolescent memories come flooding back when I was so into Denzeeeeeeel!!!!!

So, imagine seeing the same swagger, this time not from a man of righteous reformation and racial uplift but from a street thug, a drug dealer, a capitalist.

In Denzel Washington's latest role, he plays Frank Lucas, a major drug dealer in Harlem during the Vietnam era, who ran a lucrative business, in which he showcases his shrewd business skills by cutting out the "middlemen" and establishing high powered relationships between Southeast Asian suppliers of heroine, military personnel who are enlisted to smuggle drugs into the U.S., and his own relatives to set up elaborate systems to retrieve the illegal exports and get it onto the streets of America. At a bargain price.

Surely, Frank Lucas could offer lectures at any esteemed business school, and this film does an adequate job of exploring the intricacies of the "American dream," gangsterism, and what war might have to do with these issues. We learn in the end that Frank has been smuggling the drugs into the country by hiding them underneath the coffins bearing dead U.S. soldiers (let's not pretend that this isn't occurring even in our own present war).

And the way Ridley Scott directs this picture, he never lets you forget the subtext of Vietnam as each month and year is marked by the TV in the background announcing the latest travesties of early 1970s Nixon-era policies - both domestic and foreign.

It's great seeing two powerhouses like Denzel and Russell Crowe come head to head in this film, but part of me wishes that Ridley had done more with some very talented cast members (like Ruby Dee and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who are both wasted in the roles they play).

Still, it's a rather smart and "intellectual" gangster film, even though it does have some false notes here and there. But I, of course, attribute this to the problems inherent in having a white filmmaker trying to capture "black life" without knowing a damn thing about it.

For example:

• Frank Lucas is fond of presenting a "respectable" facade, including taking his beloved Mama (played by Ruby Dee, whom he buys a Westchester mansion, and she of course doesn't really want to know how he could afford this "gift") to church every Sunday. And, I don't care how uppity and bougie-boo a Black Church might be, they don't sing hymns like "A mighty fortress is our God/A bulwark never failing." They just don't! Nor do they sing "Amazing Grace" like they belong to some Presbyterian congregation in New England. THEY JUST DON'T!! But, you know, Ridley Scott has got to be smarter than this. He like everyone else in this country is familiar with what Black Church music sounds like. Did he create this incongruous mismatch of Presbyterian-church-sounding music with Harlem bourgeois life to offer an ironic critique or what?
• What the hell is he doing giving Ruby Dee lines like "Why, she's so beautiful! She's like an angel that was sent down from heaven!" to describe her son Frank's girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife, Miss Puerto Rico, a very white looking Latina with flowing brown (not black) hair. That struck me as so false, me and my friends let out a very audible groan that caused many of the white audiences to look back at us so we quieted down (no wonder, if our white viewers saw nothing jarring about that scene, they get totally shocked when they discover that black people might not want them joining their families if they happen to date and be engaged to somebody black). Even if her character was one of those "light is right" type, who treasures long flowing hair and fair skin, I can't think of any black mother who would say such shit if their son brought home any woman who "couldn't use her comb." Honestly, the film didn't do much to develop her character (if I were directing, I would be far more interested in the dynamic between this mother and this son because Frank Lucas, as dangerous and as criminal minded as he was, really cared about and loved her), so I really don't know if that line was supposed to be delivered with irony. But, it really sounded as fake as a three-dollar bill.
• And maybe because I had seen Talk to Me so recently, that I could not help but compare that film to this one, since they both cover the same time period, but somehow American Gangster felt rather anachronistic. The fashion, the scenery, everything felt so non-70s, and again, I don't know if Ridley Scott was intentional about this. The Vietnam War references are obviously about our time and our own War in Iraq. Still, even if you're just using another time period as metaphor, do some historical research, man! What's with the false notes?

All in all, apart from these flaws, this is a movie that gave me much more to think about than, say, The Departed, last year's Best Picture winner. So much testosterone and scripts about masculinity and war (and of course female nudes and female ties that always send the message that men's weakness are their relationships to women - it was Frank Lucas's flamboyant trophy wife that tipped the cops off since she thought to give him a pimpified coat to wear at a Muhammad Ali boxing match (violating his own code about dressing too "loudly," thus calling attention to his wealthy lifestyle), and it was one of his cousin/henchmen, who eventually turned him in as a deal he made with the cops when he was arrested on attempted murder/domestic violence assault charges. So, the moral of the story is: women ain't nothing but trouble and will be the downfall of every powerful man following his capitalistic dreams of being The Man.

Nothing new in that story, of course.