Ridley Scott
American Gangster

New York City, Fall 1968. Bumpy Johnson, the boss of Harlem, the "sixth godfather," dies. Even the boss of the Lucchese family, Dominic Cattano, pays his respects to him.

Without Bumpy's charismatic figure, Harlem becomes an anarchic hell. Order is restored by a silent, modest, and habitual man: Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) – the driver of the deceased godfather.

With his "mad intelligence" in organization (by eliminating all the intermediaries), Lucas manages to build a "gigantic homemade empire" of drugs (according to some, superior even to that built by the Cosa Nostra), until a cop, Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), with his "special squad," manages to trap him – and all thanks to a "flashy coat." A finale with a bang.

For those with some knowledge of the history of the New York Mafia, this is a gem (sadly underrated) – an excellent complement to the history (of the early 70s) of the 5 Families, which included the Harlem Family, acting, of course, with the permission of Cosa Nostra.

The film mercilessly portrays the African-American community of New York: on one hand, unscrupulous people who, for money, committed an unforgivable genocide in Harlem (on which, as far as I know, there hadn't been a film made), and on the other, addicts, but also poor victims who used heroin to forget their problems and, sometimes, not to feel the pangs of hunger. The scenes of injections into veins are chilling.

Ridley Scott took a big risk "offending" some "icons of the African-American people" like Joe Louis (unforgettable heavyweight champion) and Wilt Chamberlain (one of the greatest basketball players of all time), famous friends of Frank Lucas, who even had the courage to attend his trial. But this film is anything but a racist film.

Scott doesn't just talk about mafia and drugs. He also discusses the difference between Lucas's "team spirit" and "low profile," and Niki Barnes's (Cuba Gooding Jr.) greed and stupid desire to show off, another famous black gangster.

But there's also room to talk about ambiguous behaviors. Even though Richie Roberts is the honest cop who doesn't take bribes and doesn't resell confiscated drugs, his wife (Carla Gugino), when divorcing, tells him things aren't that simple: "You think you're better than your corrupt colleagues. You'll go to hell like them. You don't take money, so you can be unfair in everything else."

Really excellent historical reconstruction. The way the director manages to show the evolution of Lucas's 4-year reign (1969 – 1973) is brilliant, using some screenplay events to show us what year it is: August 1970, when Richie becomes a lawyer; the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier (March 8, 1971), a true watershed of the film; the beginning of troop withdrawals from Vietnam (January 1973), with Nixon announcing it on television.

There's also a small reference to the "Corsican mafia" (the so-called "Marseillais") and the "French Connection" – which makes the historical picture of New York crime at the time even more complete.

Denzel Washington is very good (oddly only nominated for the Golden Globe and not for the Oscar), and Josh Brolin is absolutely exceptional as the corrupt cop, who the same year also shot "No Country for Old Men." Russell Crowe and the underrated Carla Gugino are also good. The table scene between Lucas and Roberts, just before the end, with a bitter exchange, is anthology-worthy for me: Lucas: "With or without me, the addicts will keep shooting up, they'll steal to shoot up, and then die. Putting me in or letting me out won't change a thing"; Roberts: "That's how things are."

A final note. Dominic Cattano (played by the excellent and underrated Armand Assante) is a fictional name: his real name is Carmine Tramunti (1910–1978), boss of the Lucchese family at the end of the 60s, one of the biggest traffickers (and pushers) in the history of Cosa Nostra – precisely the "Gribbs" mentioned by Paul Cicero in "Goodfellas."

I want to conclude with a sentence spoken by Bumpy Johnson before dying – right at the beginning of the film – which perfectly describes the disease that has always afflicted Americans: gigantism: "America has become so big that you can no longer find your way home."