American Gangster: A nice, unremarkable film
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NEW GUY
(Mumba, India)
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i_keepwalking [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] in
American Gangster: A nice, unremarkable film
Let me get this straight at the outset. American Gangster is not a bad film, in fact like I mention in the title, it’s quite nice. Having said that, the second part of title is also true, it is quite unremarkable. I watched it less than 24 hours ago and nothing about the film is with me, while I wasn’t awfully bored watching it, there was absolutely nothing I carried outside the cinema hall.
Firstly, when one ventures into a good Vs evil storyline, he or she has already made the task a tad hard if not infinitely difficult. The theme is as old as the hills and you had better give the viewers a fresh perspective on it to hold attention. This is where the film falters at its very first hurdle itself. Even before the first word about any film is put down on paper, there is always a thought behind it; an emotion or an idea, which will guide you and help you get back on track if you’re deviating during the making. Once again, it’s not that AG does not have a thought behind it; the problem is however that it is as old as the theme itself. It is almost too easy and sometimes too tempting to end up daydreaming about absolutely any other Hollywood gangster saga while watching the film.
Yes, of course it is based on a true story so most certainly there was no liberty to fiddle with the plot too much, but still you end up feeling a little incomplete, a little dissatisfied. Here I’m afraid Mr. Scott stands alone with no one else to share the flack with him. Maybe I was expecting another ahead of its time feature like Bladerunner, but then I really wasn’t. All I wanted to see from a seasoned director was something memorable, something that would let me spend the next few days with the satisfaction of having seen a wonderful film. Sadly, I’m disappointed.
What is causing more discomfort even as I write my thoughts on the film is that, there is really nothing wrong or bad about the film that I talk at length about, in fact quite to the contrary there are a few slick shots that comes to mind. I guess the best way to capture the feeling is like having eaten in a wonderful restaurant with really nice ambience, good smiling service, and a filling but unremarkable meal. There is nothing that comes to your mind when one asks what was bad about the experience, because truly there is nothing at all. However, while ambience, smiling waiters, etc. add to the experience, the core of it all is the food or as in this case storytelling which unfortunately is very average and inconsequential. Now to be quite blunt the only reason why you manage to stifle a rising yawn successfully during the film is because you have two very reputed actors distracting you. Sadly however even they do not having anything different or specific to portray. The characterization is mediocre at best and the actors go through the motions.
Here however I’d like to say something about lead actors. Every actor, be it Marlon Brando, Kamal Hassan or even Shah Rukh Khan, each have a limited range, it is only human to have it and the success and/or caliber of the actor is based on how well they can work within these limitations and still manage to get under the skin of varied personas. But to successfully convey certain characters, the actors need good amount of help from the script. This is primarily because the role comes quite close to testing the range of that actor, and if the script lets him down, he might not be able to get it right. This unfortunately is precisely what happens to Washington. As wonderful an actor he is, it is difficult to fully accept him as the ruthless drug lord. Why? Like I said, the script and the weak characterization do not give him enough room or arsenal to do so. Surely there is more to an understated, ruthless, shrewd, family oriented, loyal and driven personality like Frank Lucas than merely talking softly and eyeballing people? Now what about Russell Crowe? The role is clearly within his limitations, but his laziness is clearly visible. Anyone even half observant will catch Mr. John Nash on more than a few occasions and if you look more closely you will find the Gladiator staring at you. Russell Crowe nowadays “stars” in films rather than act in them and unlike his sincere but handicapped co star even with a well suited role does not evoke anything for Richie Robbins’s character.
Finally, while it’s ok to catch the film on a bored weekend, watching The Departed for the 3rd time is not half bad an idea either.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
have to agree that the meal left me a tad amused, but dissatisfied to the core.
however ‘Marlon Brando, Kamal Hassan or even Shah Rukh Khan, each have a limited range, ” – now that is quite a statement to make! would have been quite accurate if u hadnt named any names though.
shah rukh khan in such esteemed company kinda dilutes the whole argument :-)
I thot russel was far better than Denzel … i actually like denzel better … i became his die hard fan after “hurricane”
but unfortunately .. i get the feelin of deja vu .. the versatality is not that pronounced !!
but i thot Russel was good at playin “the cop who had problem articulatin” his views !! i cud feel the discomfort the character was feeling!!!
and man u were soo ryt abt the limited talent of shahrukh khan !!! he is a gr8 entertainer but he has his limitations
who were the other 2 actors??? i havent heard of them!!
marlon brando had limited range?? :o
he is my idea of perfection actually. like bradman or dhyan chand or feynman of acting. personal opinion, but still i don’t think anyone comes even close to marlon brando…..
compare crowe’s cop in LA Confidential to AG. See the difference in performance. while the characters are completely different, it would have been good if crowe could have brought the searing intensity that was his trademark in earlier roles. it would have been a good counter point to DW’s detached and cool druglord and elevated DW’s performance as well due to the contrast.
now u have both people being cool, which is not good. it’s one of the reasons the matt damon/leo confrontation works in the departed. one is a cool cat and the other is scorching the screen.
AG has a lot of problems. What the fuck is crowe doing with a belly in tight tshirts? and what the fuck is up with his accent as a Nooyawker? plus what the fuck was it about him trying to be a lawyer, his wife leaving him cos he’s a dedicatd cop etc? what was the need for that? sure it may have happened, but i am also certain that Richie Robbins shat a few times during the investigation. they didn’t show that now did they?
denzel’s performance was a miscalculation. for it to work everyone around him should have been in direct contrast. there should have been more of cuba gooding jr.’s character – loud and brash.
problem with most biopics and gangsta stories is they follow a rise and fall arc. scott should have added a different angle. even in the end when he is about to get caught, there was no suspense, no large scale tragedy in sight.
disappointing film, or a classic meh film.
“he is my idea of perfection actually. like bradman or dhyan chand or feynman of acting. personal opinion, but still i don
AG is irritatingly unsatisfying for some weird reason. It had the potential to be a classic but falls short.
Im actually intrigued by the way both Ridley Scott and David Fincher have made films this year which are in direct contrast to their styles. Interestingly enough both films were shot by Harris Savides who is now eschewing his technical wizardry in the favor of a more spare realistic approach.
Fincher has “The Curios Case of Benjamin Button” coming up which is again shot on the Viper by the amazing Claudio Miranda. It also has a fantastic premise and from what I hear amazing VFX.
Scott on the other hand has a mouth watering revisionist version of the Robin Hood tale with Crowe set to play the Sheriff of Notingham coming out in 2009.
Should be fun. :d
Denzel is one of my fav actors but he’s never been good at playing bad guys. The Oscar he won for “Training Day” wasn’t really deserved that year. He should have won it earlier for “Malcolm X”
Crowe would have fun that year if he hadn’t gone apeshit on some poor TV producer.
Crowe however plays bad guys / anti-heroes very well if you take the example of films like “Romper Stomper” and “LA Confidential” but he’s awful in films like “A Good Year” and “A Good Life”.
Maybe AG was just miscast.
well lets just analyze a typical gangster movie.
The elements to the Plot
1.Tragedy
2.Rise
3.Invincibility
4.Betrayal
5.Fall
And then the most interesting aspect of all is the Cat and Mouse game between the “Good Guys” and the “Bad”. Every one knows that the Cops need not always be the Good guys.
Now I know and everyone will agree to this that all these elements are essential. Lets say this is the “formula” as they say in Bollywood parlance to make a Gangster film.
But every good gangster movie treading this formula bring their own difference in treatement let it be a true story or a dramatised version. And again a unique setting makes it stand out from others.
Now lets analayze some good gangster flicks
God Father(the father of all gangster flicks)
It had a certain understated intensity which cant be put down to any particular aspect of the script. Its just plain old good writing(of course it helped that it was adapted from an excellent book)
Good Fella’s
A unique and fast paced narrative kept it so interesting that one felt a person sitting next to you on the sofa in your living room was actually telling you as it is.
ScarFace
An unbashed take on a different kind of gangster one with no morals and no rules. ( sometimes its just so frustrating that the gangster cant break this rule or that rule a la OMERTA, this was refreshingly fun)
Gangs of New York
The most underated one’s of them all. I dont know by others but I think its U.S.P was its setting and that it showed a completely different part of the society(i.e the Irish) which made it revetting
The Departed
Bollywood learn the true meaning of “inspired” from the genius himself.
Now that I have created a lot of diversion from the topic in hand lets come back to AG
What was different?
Thats the point! everything there but nothing which sticks
So to begin with I should have said the same for AG but couldnt help discussing the rest to put things into perspective!
Chow!!!!
hey Dabba … i saw the making of the movie .. and i thot the tummy was deliberate… thats the way richie roberts was .. i guess …
but dont you think that “crowe” again playin the role with the “searing intensity” will easily look like a cinematic modification made to make the movie more glossy !!! esp when this is the reflection of a true character….just wondering !!
… and i thot the intensity was good enuf … which almost surfaces at the climax.. when he faces frank lucas !!
how did u guys like “3: 10 to yuma “???
cause i am not sure if i liked it or not … for me some scenes looked forced .. and i couldnt find the logic !!! but yeah … i kept thinkin about the movie hours after i saw it !! it had something in it !!!and i like Mr bale
@vivek
once a character like borat has been played like the way it was, you cannot really think of anyone else in the same shoes. so it’s really a hypothetical question. my point is, whatever role marlon brando eventually played, he played it to perfection. it’s like saying could dhyan chand kept goal just as well?
the bottomline is, if marlon brando did indeed have a limited range, show it to me. coz that way i guess every actor in the world has limited range. except for sunil shetty. he acts just as bad in any movie.
and thanks for explaining to me the meaning of the word ‘range’. my mistake that i could not understand such a simple everyday word. thanks a lot man!
i think its very simplistic to dismiss american gangseter as “good vs evil” “another gangster movie”. its a very complelling and textured character study of two men at different sides of the fence but yet so similar.
both of them are uncompromising and dedicated to what they do and never let anything or anyone
stop them for getting what they want .ofcourse, there’s that little detail one peddles drug and another is an upright cop .But by society’s norms , even though frank lucas is “evil” and a mass murderer, he is a much better human being
than the “good” cop , he is loved by his people good to his family(unless ofcourse someone screws up with his business!), and takes his mother to church every sunday , whereas the cop two-times his wife , ignores his son and is hated
by everyone around him !
i like the way denzel washington played this character as a smart oppurtunistic capitalist rather than a drug lord .would lucas have choosen any other line of business if he was guaranteed that he would make more easy money with it than with drugs?? . i also liked what they did with the climax , this movie could have so easily ended with a shoot out but it ends with a very interesting 15 minute long conversation, it was as if the whole movie was building up to that one face to face conversation between both the characters.
ive seen lot of gangster movies but i wasnt reminded of any one of them while watching american gangster , though maybe departed treads same ground but this was completely different in so many ways and equally capitivating.
“coz that way i guess every actor in the world has limited range. “-yes they do.
suniel shetty was good in that gopi krishnan movie:P