AMERICAN GANGSTER
Denzel Washington stays true to form and plays a mean son of a gun in the true
story of Frank Lucas, a man who smuggled heroin in the coffins of dead American
soldiers returning from the Vietnam War. Lucas began his life in poverty
in North Carolina before heading into Harlem gangland as a teen, convinced
after seeing his cousin murdered by the Klu Klux Klan when he was just six,
that the only way he could make his way in a white world was through violence.
He went on to become a millionaire drug dealer, one of The Biggest in the
States in the 1970s in fact, and all the more unusual because Lucas is not
Italian, not Mafia, but black. As his character in the film says, “You
are who you are in this world and that’s one of two things, you’re
a somebody or you ain’t nobody”. To be somebody, he cut out the
Italian Mafia who controlled the supply of heroin and went out to South East
Asia himself, where the main chunk of the film is set. Oscar-winning Schindler’s
List screenwriter Steven Zaillian has penned an astounding script packed
full of tension, zappy dialogue and strong characterisation. The film of
the season.
Verdict: Wanna be somebody? Watch this
Susie Wild sits in a crowded dark room