New York Daily News
Monday, November 5th 2007, 4:00 AM
Two films called "American Gangster" have arrived recently, both focusing on Harlem druglord Frank Lucas. One comes from Hollywood and is in movie theaters. The other is a cable television documentary. The air-brushed Hollywood vehicle stars Denzel Washington; the other is part of an ongoing Black Entertainment Television documentary series that proves, yet again, how responsible and excellent the station can be when it tries to make something both important and entertaining.
The Hollywood version of the Lucas story comes off as more than irresponsible when we realize one thing: Scores of young men have been influenced by the Tony Montana character in Brian de Palma's "Scarface." In the extra content on the "Scarface" anniversary DVD, rappers go on the record saying how much they like it.
Andre 3000 of Outkast says it most clearly: "He's doing wrong, but the crowd is rooting for him because he's coming from nothing and he rose to the top."
Sean (Diddy) Combs assures the viewer that Montana's amorality was not a hindrance to audience identification: "You just happy to see another cat that had nothing making it, no matter how he was getting it."
Russell Simmons agrees because, he says, "One of the things about hip hop is that it is about empowerment at all costs, and 'Scarface' was about empowerment at all costs. When you see that, it kind of inspires you not to take 'no' for an answer."
In those terms, "American Gangster" will probably be a very big hit, and Washington's performance could well earn him another Oscar nomination.
But here's the rub. Frank Lucas has been given qualities that he simply did not have. We see him played as a soft-spoken and sophisticated man who closely studies the written word and only explodes into violence every now and then.
In actuality, as the BET documentary reveals, Lucas was illiterate and could not count. He helped keep his books by learning that 22 pounds of $100 bills amounted to $1 million. He not only killed people to impress his ruthlessness on the underworld, but even put out a murder contract on one of his own brothers, whom he had brought from North Carolina to work in the drug trade with him. Lucas squashed the contract only because another brother had been killed and the druglord did not want his mother to have to mourn for two dead sons at the same time. Always a family man.
That such icy qualities are not in the movie makes it a highly crafted piece of poisonous eye candy. One wonders why Washington himself, one of the few actors in Hollywood with what seems to be absolute integrity, did not demand a more realistic script about Lucas. Great roles like the officer in "Courage Under Fire" and private detective Easy Rawlins in "Devil in a Blue Dress" were both complex and soulful - and could have been easily matched here. The real Frank Lucas was like a polished walnut with nothing but black rot inside.
As the BET documentary shows, and the article by Mark Jacobson on which the film was based validates, Lucas himself burst into loud sobs as he was being prosecuted in court. This happened as he heard the overwhelming testimony of the mother of an addict who died from an overdose of Lucas' brand-name heroin and was probably found as cold as a fish on ice at the market.
That would have been a fine moment to capture on film - but it would also have ripped the mask from Lucas.
Instead, "American Gangster" proves, yet again, that Hollywood is much less interested in aesthetic grandeur than it is in profits. In that sense, it is often no better than the lousy gangsters it makes into well-dressed entrepreneurs rather than the glittering spiritual vomit that they actually are.
Television Review
BET tells real story of drug kingpin Frank Lucas
By David Hinckley
New York Daily News
Thursday, November 1st 2007, 11:34 AM
The real deal, Frank Lucas, and the reel deal, Denzel Washington (below) in 'American Gangster'
With Denzel Washington due in theaters Friday as the famed Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas in "American Gangster," BET has arranged for us to meet the real Frank Lucas Wednesday night.
It's a fascinating encounter in which Lucas reflects on his drug-dealing career the way the retired chairman of Nabisco might reflect on double-stuffed Oreos.
This makes the show mildly disturbing, since some folks are undoubtedly going to come away with the impression that illegal drug dealing backed with lethal brutality can in some cases be a well-chosen career option.
Unlike most shows on drug dealers, this one ends with the main man neither dying young nor sounding penitant.
Lucas served almost 10 years in prison, which he views as payment in full for anything he did.
Okay, he says, some people died from using his heroin. But it was "their own damn fault."
His sales force, he explains, told the customers up-front his stuff was stronger than most street dope. If they chose to shoot it up like usual anyway, that wasn't Lucas' problem.
Like previous "American Gangster" episodes, this one finds a dozen or more characters who were also part of the story.
Richie Roberts, the prosecutor who finally nailed Lucas, describes his eventual arrest as a classic cops-and-robbers showdown in which Lucas finally made a mistake.
For those who tuned in late, Lucas was a Southern farm kid who came to New York and became the right-hand man to Bumpy Johnson, drug king of the black New York streets.
Lucas learned from him for 15 years and when he died, Lucas took over with an expanded agenda. The Vietnam War was raging and Lucas realized that soldiers not only gave him a vastly expanded potential consumer base, but that Southeast Asia could be a rich source for the product.
He set up direct supply lines that enabled him to undersell the other giant of the heroin industry, the mob. Among his smuggling techniques was packing dope into the coffins of dead soldiers, and his network of accomplices stretched from CIA and local officials to Harlem cops.
One moment he particularly savors, he says, was smuggling drugs on a flight that carried Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Now retired and claiming he's all legit, Lucas expresses mild regret at making money with a product that killed people. He expresses only pride in having made the money.
To most viewers, this will come off as a tough, hard-boiled story. To a handful, one imagines, it will be downright inspiring.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
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