Nice Work

Rented another movie from iTunes. American Gangster. Too bad Apple didn’t let me know in advance of yoinking my money out of my hand that the movie lacked subtitles — I guess you have to trust to luck on getting captions from iTune rentals. Without them I was lost: I neither speak nor understand English. I could tell that the story takes place in America because it wasn’t titled Scandinavian Gangster, but beyond that it’s all guesswork.

Okay. Let’s just do our best. In this genial remake of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Guys and Dolls, Denzel Washington plays Frank, who, in one of the best scenes in the movie, puffs on a cigar in Vietnam. He’s a-travellin’ to the poppy fields of Cambodia.

As so often happens to people when smoking a fine cigar, Frank has a money-making brainstorm: Why not get dead GI’s to smuggle heroin for him? This cuts out the middleman, since the middleman is not alive. In no time Frank becomes very rich indeed. But his life is not all peaches and cream: he has to deal with hotheads likes Cuba Gooding who, in one of the best scenes in the movie, angrily smashes a glass.

Frank’s nemesis is Richie Rich, played with pep by Russell Crowe. In one of the best scenes in the movie, Richie makes a sandwich with tuna straight from the can, dill pickles, mayo and potato chips, all crushed together:

Richie is a Federal Drug Finder hot on the trail of Frank. Here he enjoys a peaceful moment heating up some soup while Henry Kissinger talks on the TV in the background… Oh! I forgot to tell you: All this adventure takes place in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Everyone smokes and smokes and smokes and smokes.

I must warn you about American Gangster: it’s not all cigars and tuna. There is a great deal of hurting and bruising. For example, in one of the best scenes in the movie a strapping fellow tumbles over a houseplant:

I don’t want to give away the ending where Richie captures Frank and Frank goes to prison for fifteen years, but he becomes friends with Richie anyhow and helps him end police corruption and heroin traffic in New York. I’ll just show you one of the best scenes in the film where Richie and Frank, in 1991, enjoy a couple of Starbucks lattes while strolling through a peaceful, cleaned-up Harlem.

In a nutshell: Good eatin’, good drinkin’, expensive cigars… and dangerous houseplants! Rated R for noodity and profanity and a bloody, bitten hand. I give American Gangster two stars. One star for Ruby Dee as Frank’s Mom, and one star for Josh Brolin’s mustache (it makes him look like Burt Reynolds).

I’d toss in another star if only Denzel had worn an honest-to-gosh sixties ‘fro, but, well, who durst blame the man?