For as much heat as they take, there’s often nothing quite like watching a great gangster movie. Gangsters are among the most compelling characters in America in part because they seem to be so distinctly American.
If you’re looking for a great gangster epic and you’ve already checked out The Irishman, you might want to spend some time with American Gangster. The movie is a loose adaptation of the true story of Frank Lucas, a gangster who operated in the 1970s and smuggled heroin into the U.S. in American service planes returning from Vietnam. Even as it chronicles Lucas’ exploits, it also tells the story of the cop who became determined to take him down.
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It features an all-time great cast
American Gangster was sold at the time on the strength of its two lead performers, and that makes a ton of sense. Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington were two of the biggest stars in the world, and they remain two of the best actors of their generation. Once you get past those two main performers, though, you’ll discover that the cast list is absolutely brimming with interesting actors.
Josh Brolin, Carla Gugino, Idris Elba, Norman Reedus, and John Ortiz are all playing crucial roles in this nearly three-hour epic, and because the movie has such an extensive runtime, they all get something to do.
It was directed by one of the surest hands in Hollywood
American Gangster was directed by Ridley Scott, and there are few directors in Hollywood history who are more capable of making great movies. It’s true that Scott doesn’t make a masterpiece every time he steps up to the plate, but American Gangster is one of his best movies, and that’s in part because Scott knows when to get out of the way.
He’s never been a flashy director, and Scott knows that the talent he’s assembled combined with his eye for how to construct scenes means that he doesn’t need to do anything overly stylistic. He lets the story speak for itself.
It’s loosely based on a true story
There are some occasions when it makes sense to adhere as closely to the facts of what happened in real life as possible. More often, though, it makes more sense for Hollywood to depart from what really happened for the sake of telling the most compelling version of the story.
American Gangster takes its inspiration from the real story of Frank Lucas, a drug smuggler who used American service planes returning from Vietnam to smuggle heroin into the country. The movie makes the important decision to take some liberties with its story, though, which means that the movie is as interesting as possible without being weighed down by the minutiae of what actually happened.
American Gangster is streaming on Netflix.