One Of The Best Cop Based Films Ever

The American Gangster is a movie about how a detective,Richard Crowe staring as Det. Richie Roberts,works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington, who was a heroin kingpin from Manhattan. Det. Richie has a bad reputation in the police department because he turns in $1 million dollars in drug money that he found. Any officer who would not share such a find with his fellow officers is considered not very trustworthy.

Frank Lucas' career would be an ideal case study for a business school. Inheriting a crime empire from his famous boss Bumpy Johnson, he cornered the New York drug trade with successful capitalist strategies. He personally flew to Southeast Asia to buy his product directly from the suppliers, used a clever importing scheme to get it into the United States, and sold it at higher purity and lower cost than anyone else was able to. He smuggled the drugs into the country in the coffins of dead Americans soldiers coming home from Viet-Nam. At one point he was making upwards of one million dollars a day.At the end, he was worth more than $150 million, and got a reduced sentence by cutting a deal to expose three-quarters of the NYPD narcotics officers as corrupt.

In this film Frank does not play the part of the typical stereotyped drug lord. He does not wear any fancy rings on his fingers or any gold around his neck. He is married to a loving wife and even takes his mother to church on Sunday. The authorities take almost forever to even identify him and even then they were still hesitant because they did not believe that the Mafia drug trade in Harlem could be taken over by such a person. But Frank did not only take over the drug trade, he actually lived to talk about it.

On the other hand, Detective Richie,is running into his own roadblocks by the police themselves. It seems that he is on a one man crusade and he will not bend. His own colleague [Josh Brolin] threatens him, but Det. Richie is determined to bring Lucas down.

Ridley Scott does a superb job as the director of this film which is in fact a true story.Both Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are perfect in the criminal and cop relationship. This film is actually about a successful business enterprise that just happens to be illegal, not unlike some of the recent scandals involving some American corporations. I would classify this film as one of the best cop based films ever.