Why? I suppose the easy answer falls somewhere in the desire of all of us to live outside of the normal conventions of civilized society--to ignore the rules that keep us from doing whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. The cinematic criminal is often portrayed positively in this sense. Most of these films include at least on scene where the criminal/hero ignores a conventional barrier (even small ones work) in a dramatic and glorified fashion, with little or no repercussion. Think, for example, of the common mob movie scene where the mobster walks into a speakeasy and takes the best table away from whatever clueless fop mistakenly thought was reserved for him, usually with the help or blessing of the club's management. We all want to be able to do stuff like that without being bounced out or beat up.
Another answer to the question could be in the ability of crime films to introduce their own strict moral code. Criminal/heroes don't live by society's arbitrary standards, instead following their own code based on the things that really matter in their lives. Loyalty, of course, is the lynch pin of the movie criminal's morality, and the massive volume of mob movies bears this out. One of my favorite movie lines of all time, spoken by Michael Corleone to his brother Fredo: "Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever." Film criminals universally value loyalty above all else, and the clichéd phrase "the family business" shows up in many of these movies, regardless of whether the criminal/heroes are actually related. Real world viewers covet that world where people trust their friends and family with their lives on a regular basis, and those relationships stand as the primary currency of peoples' character and reputation. Because, of course, in the real world, people are abandoned, let down, ratted out, cheated on, betrayed, and lied to on a daily basis. (And of course, in the movies, the penalty for such behavior is swift and deadly justice, which almost never happens in real life.)
In any event, crime movies have a very real tendency to glorify their criminal/heroes, while at the same time punishing them for their sins. Viewers of "The Godfather" admire Michael for his loyalty to the family, his courage to act on his convictions, and his ability to outsmart opponents, but at the same time, those viewers recognize and accept Micheal's inevitable slide into the wages of his sins. (See also the rise and fall of Tony Montana in Scarface. In fact, drug movies are especially good at this dichotomy, because the characters almost always end up hooked on their own product.) Crime movies, then, try to get the audience to buy into the world of the criminal/hero, to recognize and even sympathize with his motivations and morals, while at the same time realistically depicting the consequences of a life of crime in society. The criminal rarely wins in real life, and they rarely win in the movies.
That brings us to "American Gangster." I didn't get this movie, because it fails to fit into the above-described mold. While I would normally applaud a film that breaks away from traditional conventions, I can't do that with this one, because the breaks don't make any sense to me. Here's a breakdown of what confused me about this movie:
1) Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) is set up as a normal criminal hero - ruthless with enemies and fiercely loyal to family and friends. He embodies the criminal/hero morality, until the end of the movie when he turns snitch and bargains for a lighter sentence in exchange for information about his criminal exploits. The movie tries to downplay this egregious breach of criminal ethos with a well-acted scene where Frank explains that he'll only turn in dirty cops or other gangsters, as opposed to his own family/network. I didn't buy it. Frank Lucas is a snitch. He plea bargained. He ratted out his fellow criminals. This is unheard of in the cinematic world of criminal/heroes and turns Frank into more Fredo than Michael. The central character of a crime movie cannot be Fredo.
2) Director Ridley Scott intersperses the movie with gut-wrenching shots of heroin addicts partaking of Frank's product. Many of these shots include neglected children, as if images of dying drug addicts weren't depressing enough. These images, though, are not addressed within the larger context of the film. The images do a terrifically effective job of conveying the horrors of drug abuse and poverty, and tend to shoot holes in the audience's admiration on Frank Lucas, as the traditional criminal/hero. As in a movie like "Scarface," we start to see the awful consequences of the criminal/hero's actions, but unlike those other movies, those consequences never reach the main character. Frank doesn't get hooked on heroin, nor do his wife, brothers, or other close associates. Instead, we get a sense that the world of the crime bosses, cops, and authorities, exists on a higher plane than that of the junkie. None of the filth or decay of the end-user gets on Frank, and we're left with the sense that the junkie will continue to get high no matter what Frank or the cops do. Of course, this is true, and Frank says as much in a speech toward the end of the film, but it doesn't fit the movie. Frank stands alone in the final shot, after serving 15 years of a 70 year sentence (reduced by his snitching), and you get the sense that there were no real consequences to his actions.
Overall, while this movie was wonderfully produced (great acting, interesting directing), the message of the film is muddled and ineffective. The film is structured like a traditional criminal/hero story, but Frank Lucas breaks the moral code and forfeits his integrity in the process. Likewise, the film does not punish Frank for the horrific consequences of his desire to make money, even though we are shown those consequences in agonizing detail. What's left over, then, is the feeling that perhaps the film is really trying to make a postmodern point about how everyone is both good and bad, and none of it matters anyway. If so, the film fails there too because it spends so much time establishing Frank as a traditional criminal/hero, and just as much time establishing Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe's cop/prosecutor) as a traditional good cop/corruption buster in the mold of Elliot Ness. In the end, it's just too confusing.
(P.S. What was Richie anyway? A cop or a lawyer? He does all the police work in the movie, then at the end appears as the prosecutor in Frank's trial giving closing arguments. That made no sense to me at all.)
** Post script added 1/22/08: CNN posted a story about the film's gross inaccuracies, and a lawsuit by several DEA agents against the producers for defamation. <<http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/22/film.american.gangster.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview>>
This makes the movie even more confusing, as it evidently goes to great lenght to make Lucas some sort of Robin Hood figure.
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