American Gangster :
I don't know what fascination I still have with street life. I am not drawn to the violence nor do I hold these people up in any esteem. They are parasites on American Life.  This Drama takes place starting in 1968 in Harlem. To understand Frank Lucas you must go back to when he was a boy of 6 years old in North Carolina .

Imagine what an imprint in his mind, as cops and KKK roll up and call out his 12 year old cousin, and tie him with arms out stretched, then ram a shotgun in his mouth breaking his teeth, then let go both barrels, all for "eyeballing a white woman".  From that day on, he figures cops are fair game.  Whatever he has to do to survive and make a buck is OK. Life is here and now!

The movie doesn't get into his early street life, but in real life the time comes he has a to run from home himself and he ends up in NY Harlem and through a pool game meets and befriends and old street gangster, non other than Ellsworth " Bumpy" Johnson, who makes him his personal driver and later mentors him in the ways of the street. Johnson himself has been played in movies such as the Cotton Club and Hoodlum by Lawrence Fishbourne.  After 15 years of there association Bumby dies of a heart attack in 1968 and that starts Frank Lucas' career as a drug kingpin and is the start of the movie.  In the same time frame other young black men are working street gangs but none establish direct connections with a prime source, and he actually vertically markets the drug giving him the most margins and brilliantly does not show his wealth nor his swagger except around his own kind.  Violent, brutal, cunning, brilliant businessman, he will however violate one of his own rules and make a fatal mistake that finally puts the police onto him, but even then they don't get it!  He is the Mafia supplier by that time not the other way around! The story shows this connection and how it made and how he cunningly used the US military and their transportation system to get drugs int of the country hidden in the coffins of dead GI's.

The movie is a little long at 2 hours 40 minutes but it gives the viewer time to understand a lot of the background of this lifestyle, the hatred, mistrust, and ultimately the price the community pays for having crooked cops, judges and a host of other greedy parasites that all live off this money at the expense of society.  Denzel is convincing as Frank Lucas and believe it or not, Russel Crowe actually looks like detective Ritche that dogs him with a crew like the Untouchables.  His personal life is a shambles as he is all about his work! That is the blessing and maybe the curse of this movie, is the length.  It gives you time to understand both characters and how even though they don't meet or confront each other until the end why they are both who they are!  One of the better bioptic movies of a gangster I've seen.

Another tidbit is the story and later the movie Sepico take time in the same ime and place as this drama is unfolding.  Another look at that movie might also shed some light on that time and place in American histroy.