Man, I wanted that guy dead. No, not Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas. The bad cop, the crooked cop. Isn’t that something? The character most detested is a crooked cop, who, sure, takes bribes, but he’s not primarily responsible for murdering people, whether with guns or needles, like Frank Lucas is. But we like Frank Lucas more than the crooked cop, Tupo, and probably more than Russell Crowe’s honest cop (who sleeps around on the side).
Why do we like Frank Lucas as portrayed by Denzel Washington anyway? A big part of the explanation is that we like Denzel Washington too much. As Chris Rock says, comparing himself and Denzel,“Another reason I don’t cheat [with my marriage] is I never meet any girls that want to fuck me. I’m just not that celebrity. I don’t bring it out of ‘em like that. Like, women see Denzel Washington, and they’re like, ‘I’m going to fuck him!’ They start kicking off their shoes as soon as they see him…” Denzel’s just far too cool for the film. He goes walking around in his immaculate suits, just generally being, you know, cool. Even when he’s arrested, he’ s cool. He gives off that trademark Denzel Washington look—the film is full of trademark Denzelisms, like the slight impassioned stutter in “Even if they don’t know me from, from, from the chairman of General Mills!”—as if to say, “Is this all you’ve got?” and be slightly annoyed by the whole prospect.
But obviously our liking Frank Lucas is not just a one-off thing. It’s not just Denzel. It’s Pacino in Godfathers I and II; it’s Goodfellas and all the rest. Nor is the gangster the first sainted criminal: look at Arsene Lupin, gentleman-robber of France (whose books are still sold) or Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. The point is that the honorable thief and murderer is a celebrated tradition in literature and the arts.
Usually, however, the appeal of the gangster is separated from those he kills; when he does, it’s of the venal and corrupt and therefore not worth worrying about. Often, like Don Corleone in The Godfather, the gangster refuses a type of business that he finds evil or immoral—he couldn’t take up the drug trade because that would be wrong. But the truth is, of course, that gangsters kill people.
Ridley Scott couldn’t, often, decide whether or not to go realistic with his movie. We see plenty of needles plunging into skin, blood gushing out of the wounds, with cringes from the audience desired and obtained, but that felt like a throwaway, just a gesture towards realism rather than a commitment. OK, we’ve got that down—now crank up the funk and get Denzel and Russell doing Denzel and Russell things.
That makes the movie seem a little too superficial, because it’s not stupid. It would be stupid if it were just that, but it’s not—the most interesting part of the film is Denzel’s American Gangster. The most important word in the title is American, because, in a perverse way, Frank Lucas is portrayed to be a kind of American Napoleon, a man too skilled for his own good.
Frank Lucas, we’re told, rises at 5:00 AM every day, and goes straight to work. Eats breakfast alone, then meets with his accountant or lawyer. He rarely goes out on the town, but when he does, it’s at his own restaurants and clubs, and never with organized gangsters (they’re dirty riffraff—there’s a scene early in the movie where, when Frank’s just beginning his climb, a rival puts a glass down on a wooden table, where it leaves behind beads of liquid. In response, Frank puts a coaster down right underneath it), just with sports stars, businessmen and the like. The most important thing in business, he lectures his family as he inducts them into enterprise, is honesty, hard-work, all those good old fashioned things that our parents tell us to do but are hard to follow. There’s one scene where Frank’s wife gives him a ridiculous fur coat, which he wears, and tragedy befalls him. He burns the coat; it’s too pimped-out, too flashy for him.
How does he get rich? Pure entrepreneurial spirit. He finds the best product, goes straight to the supplier, buys wholesale. It’s the Protestant ethic as applied to gangsterism. He truly is a clever businessman.
Perhaps, though, he’s too much a clever businessman for the movie’s own good. Denzel Washington is a hard man to distrust, to think of as evil. I’m quite capable of ascribing outrage, intensity bubbling up like a volcano to him, but never outright evil. And Denzel’s not evil here in this movie; he’s amoral.
There are two incidents that exemplify that. First is during that aforementioned lecture. They’re sitting in a diner. He suddenly sees a man from whom he must collect a debt, so he cuts his speech short. He walks out, demands his money. When he doesn’t get it, he shoots him, right there in the street. Everyone is shocked. Frank Lucas comes back and asks, “So what was I talking about again?” He doesn’t ask this in a, “Let’s all ignore this, capiche?” kind of a way, but more of a compartmentalized, I honestly forgot what I was talking about kind of a way.
The second is another obligation-enforcing scene. One associate of Frank’s shoots a cop in the knee out of anger during a party. Frank comes over and beats the shit out of him, and a reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica hangs in the background, as if to signal, the horror of violence. But Frank gets temporarily angry and then recovers, because he’s so rational.
At other times, though, he tries for goodness. Like his mentor, “Bumpy” Jackson, he gives out turkeys at Thanksgiving, he buys a house for his mom, and he’s apparently so likable that Russell Crowe’s honest cop ends up becoming his friend and defense attorney. The film tries to go for a character profoundly complex in motivation and deed, but he comes out looking like the supreme homo economicus, the ideal rational man, more force than character. He’s an interesting force, but not entirely human.
The other comparatively small flaw is the obvious homages to older gangster films. I’m no expert with gangster movies, but even I could spot the horse’s head homage scene and the church shooting homage. But overall, although the film has those criticisms, it’s well worth seeing.
****
The strike has not been followed very strongly. Many lines were near full service. This must be counted as a victory for Sarkozy.
At the same time, apparently the unions have stepped up their efforts at demonstrations. The first time, the unions marched from Nation to Republique in the eastern part of the city, the traditional working-class appeal. But this time, they marched in the department stores section, taking the fight straight to the consumer in Paris. It reeks of desperation, given that these people are the very ones inconvenienced and most likely to be pissed off at the unions.
But what do I know? I did not see either march. I feel as if I’m a part of a massive game of telephone, only reporting what other people have reported. Not saying it’s untrue or anything, but I can’t get the feel, the spirit of the thing. But, hey, that’s life. Consider how many people think Hillary’s a bitch and have never even spoken to the women.
But that’s way too flippant. The truth is, today more than ever, we can’t know everything or even most things. Going back to American Gangster, there’s a part where Frank Lucas avers, “I’m a Renaissance Man,” and we’re supposed to feel proud of him, and we do, because it’s a good thing. But the truth is, to be a Renaissance Man in the Renaissance is much easier than to be a Renaissance Man in the Information Age. There’s too much knowledge to know. We must rely on others, on experts and elites and their good will and integrity.
Which is why spin, of the variety seen in the press coverage of the last strike—the conductor’s union is powerful and it’s a huge victory; the conductor’s union is weak and the strike went great—is so damaging when allowed to pass undiluted into the body politic. We aren’t experts and can’t be—inform us, please!
****
Almost as if to put the lie to my words, Rue de la Cité Universitaire became dirty, literally so in the way it was in Amsterdam. If this damages your trust of me, I accept that.
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