WhatzUp

American Gangster
by Derek Neff

American Gangster

The DVD edition of American Gangster contains both the original theatrical release and an expanded cut of the film. Going for broke, I went right for the expanded version. Not having first seen the version that played in theaters, I’m not sure which scenes were added to the expanded cut to make it 18 minutes longer than the original: was it the scene in which drug kingpin Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) confronts Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character? (It’s a good scene, but it doesn’t really go anywhere.) Or how about the raid on the drug lab toward the end? (Seems like it takes an awfully long time for those cops to get to the floor where the lab is.) Or how about the sequence in which Lucas goes to Bangkok to arrange a deal where he buys heroin direct from the producers? (It’s good, but again, it seems a bit protracted.)

Frankly, I resent a little having to choose between watching a version of a movie that has been edited for the theater or an expanded edition that may genuinely add depth, or that may just create unnecessary drag on the story line. In other words, which is the “real” movie, and how in the world would I know, not having yet seen either version? Director Ridley Scott has over the past 26 years released so many versions of Blade Runner that you should know how to specify the version you’re talking about when referring to it. Now he’s created instant confusion with the release of his latest picture.

American Gangster is actually two stories, told in parallel, which join and braid together at the very end. We’re shown Lucas’ rise to the top of the drug world, and we also see the tumultuous life of a Serpico-like honest narcotics detective named Roberts (Russell Crowe) trying to find the source of an uncommonly pure brand of heroin known on the streets as Blue Magic. It’s so pure, in fact, that it leads to a rash of fatal overdoses throughout Harlem, circa 1970.

The movie almost plays like a greatest hits collection of great crime sagas, gamely riffing on signature scenes in The Untouchables, Scarface, Heat, The Godfather II and others. Or have we seen so many gangster movies by now that they just seem to mimic each other?

I enjoyed the first half of American Gangster quite a bit without ever quite thinking it was an indispensable contribution to the genre. The movie’s latter half, however, drags considerably, and the closing moments (at least of the expanded version) seem almost a parody of a silly buddy-cop film.

Sometimes less really is more.