American Gangster

Mobster film fans are bound to slap comparisons or rants accusing imitation by American Gangster. It's the movie's Mafioso mentality, where the Coppola and Scorsese reign as sole genre Dons.

Enter powerhouse team Ridley Scott, Steve Zaillian and Brian Grazer (director, writer and producer, respectively) with leads Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe storming the genre swathed in Oscar gold, and even the street urchin by the Coffee Bean on Sunset can sense the disruption in Hollywood's mafia movie-making power.

But Gangster doesn't so much rise into the ranks of, say, The Godfather or Goodfellas, as it revitalizes the '70s Superfly groove-merging the style and sound of blaxpoitation flicks with the grit and grime of New York City streets. Frank Lucas (Washington), personal driver to the late black mob boss Bumpy Johnson, swaggers his way into the criminal elite with a mackdaddy charisma (and at one point, a sumptuous chinchilla fur coat and matching hat that would emasculate any lesser man).

Frank is a cut-throat fusion of family values and hard ambition-carving a Thanksgiving turkey with the same upright ease he has when setting a man on fire. His foil is local schlump of a police officer Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe plus a few pounds), a rough-around-the-edges ladies' man beleaguered by a mess of domestic and professional issues.

The two plots run along parallel tracks for the majority of the film, colliding when Crowe's good-cop-among-the-slick-corrupt manages to put a face to the recent swell of low-cost, high-grade heroine labeled, "Blue Magic."

Washington and Crowe are a dream team as male leads. But even Crowe's adept eye for character nuance isn't enough to disrobe Washington's macho-suave screen presence. Gangster is a visceral experience that thrives on hip beats and stylish men strutting to the funky soundtrack that pulsates at every slowed down turn on the New York grid.

Zaillian's bona fide gangster/ethnic lingo is almost an unnecessary addendum to Washington's pimp walk and Josh Brolin's (super-dirty cop, Detective Trupo) sly summer-suited unctuousness. Scott takes a requisite peek at the victimized masse, but these scenes of urban overdose are as equally trifling as Roberts' scruffy decency in the scheme of glamour and power.

Sure, the film analyzes crime within the American context-where else but in consumer-driven America could a blue-collar minority outmaneuver hierarchy and tradition? There's ringing irony and criticism too in the fact that Lucas imports pure heroine in the caskets of deceased Vietnam soldiers. But as a criticism and as a "based on a true story," Gangster is a serious film seduced by its subject matter.