Beyond Superfly

Recognizing Scott's critique of American capitalism is the key to understanding how innovative the character of Frank Lucas is. True, Scott too often goes for the easy, cynical point, and he has an obvious contempt for his audience (yes, Russell, we are entertained). But where Scott's cyncial impulse could certainly have led him to make this film into Frank Lucas' Badasss Song, the movie is levened by Zaillian's script. Zaillian concocted the Richie Roberts character to contrast with Lucas as if to counteract Scott's natural instinct to take his characters all the way into the heart of darkness. Washington shows enough calculation that Frank Lucas isn't simply the Iago of the Harlem drug trade; he seems to push back against Scott's desire for bloodthirsty macho warriors. The combination of these sensibilities helped Scott realize the tragic nature of Frank Lucas, rather than just his gangster-gladiator tendencies. Reviews tended to mistake the novel complexity of Frank Lucas as just being an amalgam of movie gangsters, from Al Capone to Don Corleone to Tony Montana to the blaxploitation stars of the '70s. Again, they're only half-right: American Gangster's Frank Lucas is really a "post-gangster" character. Just as the real Frank Lucas was an innovator, American Gangster's Frank Lucas stands in contrast to velour-clad Italian mobster stereotypes, Rudy Ray Moore's wild suits, and mafioso rappers' bling. He's not Tony Montana, spraying mansions with machine gun fire; Frank Lucas employs brutal violence far more efficiently, walking directly up to a debtor and putting a bullet in his brain.

This characterization of Frank Lucas literally sheds the gold-chain stereotypes of movie gangsters to suggest that the most criminal elements of our society aren't criminals like Tony Soprano, but clean-cut corporate executives who are completely cut off from the people they sell to and employ — robber barons for the post-Reagan era. Scott and Zaillian makes the point in the plot: Lucas arouses the suspicion of Detective Roberts the one time he goes out in a chinchilla pimp-coat. The fact that Lucas has adopted the costume and, mostly, the temperament of a straight arrow is the dark side of social progress: Now anybody can exploit the weak and vulnerable for money without rules or consequences, if you look good, have charisma and know how not to get caught. This is precisely what makes American Gangster's Frank Lucas a deeply frightening figure: A man of extraordinary gifts and charm, boldly putting his outside-the-box ideas into action in a self-made entrepreneurial venture, pursuing the good life for his family: What could possibly be more American than that? The fact is, Lucas knows that his "business" is destroying the community, he just chooses to compartmentalize his guilt, or worse, he simply doesn't care. Once he bypasses his conscience to amorality, there's nothing to stop him but the drying-up of the market. This is the truth Frank Lucas puts to the audience, and what makes him, truly, an American gangster.