Review: American Gangster (2007)

You already know I’m a Ridley Scott fan – while I was in film school in LA, I spent 4 months interning at his company during the making of A Good Year. So you’ll expect gushing during any review of a Ridley film (and yes, that’s here). But if you’ve already seen Gangster, you’ll know it’s deserved; this film is a piece of filmmaking on par with Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator, anything he’s made, or any gangster movie we’ve ever seen (though I am not suggesting that it exceeds The Godfather, Coppola faithful. Spare me your letter of vilest hate). It both embraces convention and holds it out at arm’s length, reinventing how we see organized crime and its fallout in ways that the twenty years of network television between this film and Goodfellas has tried and utterly failed to.

The storyline is as basic as it comes: druglord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) floods the street with a heroin twice as potent and half as expensive as anything else available, netting himself money and power. Tenacious narcotics cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) tries to sniff his way up the power chain and bring down Lucas. We’ve seen this story before (well, not personally, probably, but on the television).

Naturally, the story is in the details, and Ridley is never more on his game in that regard than he is right here. Every piece of standard Ridley filmmaking is on display here; there are combinations of every sort of inventive camerawork here that, unlike so many directors of the day, always enhances and never detracts. But it’s his eye for verisimilitude that has improved with age: every cement-block hallway and cramped office, every piece of lighting, every prop, feels completely true to the world and to the characters. No one ever gets that “hey, I’m in a period film, don’t I look cool in 70’s duds!” look on their face, which is impressive considering the supporting actors on display here aren’t usually known for their restraint (rappers T.I. and Common do stalwart work here, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. reminds us why we once thought he was Oscar material).

But the real story is the performances of the two leads, who (like Michael Mann’s Heat) essentially head up two entirely separate films and only cross paths at the very last moment – and even then, with the whole story almost completely told, the sparks of their very proximity ignite the film again. Washington deserves the real credit here, his Frank Lucas is a role as perfectly suited to him as any he’s ever done. Here, Lucas is driven, dedicated, committed to family; he betrays almost no weaknesses – he’s a businessman, through and through. The idea of good and evil seems to essentially have never occurred to him. He sees an opportunity and exploits it, and when the money starts to roll in, the first thing he does is take care of the people he brought with him. Washington plays Lucas essentially the same way he’s played every role he’s ever taken, it’s not until we’re a good hour and a half into his performance that we see that Lucas is almost soulless, a man of principles and work ethic but no heart at all.

Crowe’s portrayal of Roberts is just as complicated, a man of considerable passion and ethic who has burned every element of his life down except for his commitment to his profession and the good work that he’s doing in it. Early on we see him recover almost a million dollars in police bribes; rather than keeping the money, staying rich, and staying out of trouble at the station, he turns the cash in, fully knowing that the money will end up in the hands of the dirty cops it was going to anyway (and, of course, it does) and that he'll be ostracized for ratting (and he is). It’s a basic vignette on the sort of man Roberts is, but tellingly, it haunts Roberts the rest of the film, as the men he works with and the men he seeks to bring down react in the same unbelieving, head-shaking fashion when they hear the story. It’s as if to everyone in the film but Roberts, the law is something along the lines of a parental curfew, the sort of thing for goody-goodies who don’t know the value of a dollar. In his darker moments, it sometimes seems Roberts himself feels that.

The trailers bill the film as a pounding head-to-head combat between good and evil, but really Roberts and Lucas are cut from the same mold, separated only by a small differentiation in the direction of their moral compass. But that small difference gives them such different lives it takes the whole film for us to see how similar they are. But with a film as good as this one, it’s certainly worth waiting that long.

Four Stars Out Of Five

The Writer's Guild Strike

In general, when we hear about things like the WGA strike, we find it a bit laughable. And for right now, it certainly is - seeking a share of digital profits that don't exist yet, fighting to get story editors from reality shows classified as writers so that they can join the picket lines - and it all means that we get stuck with no late night talk shows, no SNL, and a good chance that there'll be long hiatuses on narrative shows later this season. As if the writers for "Heroes" needed help derailing the season.

I've been enjoying the nonsense this week, since it give this whole next year of television a bizarrely fun twist if this drags on a few weeks - how will each show end their season? Will some shows fall completely apart, where they start having those episodes that are so bad that you start calling friends to get them to turn on a TV right then ("Quick! 'Law & Order' just added a talking cat!"). But I got a piece of news from Peracchio that gave me a splash of reality.
My old quasi-roommate (don't ask), Greg Weidman, works for the writers of "NCIS." He's not a Guild member himself, but his boss is, so he's on vaca while all this gets wrapped up. And as of Friday, he might not have a job. And that's sad. Yet I can't stop laughing at this picture.


He's the one who's... y'know, never mind, I'll let you figure it out. Anyway, as much as I hope Greg gets to keep his job and stay out there on the street protesting throughout the break, I do hope the break continues a little longer. I love watching the panic of networks making truly outrageously bad decisions, whether in ill-conceived reality shows ("Come quick! 'Midgets Vs. Meerkats' is doing improv comedy night!") or just generally poor choices ("The cat's developed a cocaine addiction! He's screaming profanities at Sam Waterson!"). It'll be fun.

Wait two weeks from now, when when you start hearing things like "We've decided that, in order to save money, when we get back from the break, we're going to move shooting for 'Gossip Girl' from Upper East Side New York to Oklahoma City," or "'Criminal Minds' is going to be written as more of a one-man show to save cash on salaries until sweeps." You'll see the fun in it, too, I promise.

Welcome to the world, Emily.

As of 2:55 ET today, I am an uncle. Emily Adelaide Wyman is 6 pounds even. Congratulations to people other than me can be sent here.

Heidi was induced this morning, and so Emily arrived a good two or three weeks before her due date, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she did the right thing and inherited Heidi's genes rather than our side of the family's. I'm hoping that she inherits my SAT scores, my love of good filmmaking, and nothing else.

Congratulations, bro. I knew you could do it.

You too, Heidi. You helped.

What's Wrong With Major League Baseball, or Why I Think The Pirates Should Become America's Team

I thought about naming this post “A-Rod and What’s Wrong With Major League Baseball,” but I was afraid someone would think I had recycled a post from 2001 (ooooh! feel the burn!). Frankly, I feel a little bad for A-Rod – literally right as I was writing that last sentence, Seth Meyers commented on the A-Rod opt-out on SNL, noting “he’s available for any team with money to spare that doesn’t like winning.” But seriously, folks.

This may surprise you, but this post was actually not intended to be entirely a collection of poorly-executed A-Rod jokes (though I’m always willing to go there, I just don’t know if there’s enough demand. Just like I don’t know if there’s enough demand for a $350 million player who can’t hit in the postseason! Hey-o! Here I come!). This post concerns the shadowy future of the MLB in the coming years, and for a change, it has nothing to do with steroids.

I’m still floating on the Red Sox’s second world championship in my lifetime, so complaining about the future of baseball feels a little awkward, but it was while watching the World Series this year that I realized just how truly bad this league could become if it continues along its current path. And it was A-Rod who showed me that.

If you watched the World Series this year (and according the ratings, you didn’t, so I better explain it) you’ll already know that A-Rod has chosen to opt out of his Yankee contract and look for more money elsewhere. His agent, Scott Boras, decided the opportune time to announce this news would be in the middle of the World Series, in order to shame the Yankees, who always feel they should be in the World Series, and to spread the buzz among the millions of fans watching the telecast (forgetting that 7 of the 10 million fans watching were in the greater Boston area, where the prospect of signing A-Rod for any reason other than screwing the Yankees seems inconceivable).

But perhaps Boras was right to announce it then, because sports nation has been buzzing about the possibilities. Will A-Rod screw the Yankees and sign with the Red Sox? Or the Mets? Perhaps he’ll travel out West again and sign with the Giants or the Angels. For the next several weeks, the major question on every baseball talk show will have to be who will sign this year’s MVP.

What’s a much more pertinent question is, “who can?” A-Rod would’ve made $81 million over the next 3 years, and the Yankees proposed adding another 5 years to the end of his contract for $150 million, which makes an 8-year total of… lessee here, carry the one… $230.65 million more than Kevin Youkilis made this season. Which one would you want on your team? But A-Rod wants more. $100 million more.

Honestly, I can’t fault A-Rod. New York was never good for him, and he’ll make that money somewhere – maybe with the Giants, who loved Bonds with the sort of judgment-free love that only a city with no other currently valid sports franchises can give. A-Rod would thrive there. Bonds would last three more seasons with A-Rod behind him. The media would give them a really inane nickname, like the Record-Breaking Rockers or something vomitous like that. A-Rod would spend his money on something outrageous and idiotic, like buying Britsh Columbia or crossbreeding horses to try to make unicorns, or something similar. Everyone would sigh and do their best to ignore the team, but the team would win a lot of games, there’d be at least one good playoff series each year, and all would be right with the world.

Unless, of course, you don’t live in San Francisco, or Boston, or New York, or one of those cities with the capability to sign A-Rod. Maybe you live in Tampa Bay, or Kansas City, or Oakland, or Phoenix, or all those other cities that never bothered to throw their hats into the bidding ring because they couldn’t ever possibly afford it.

I know a lot has been said about the divide between baseball’s haves (Yankees, Mets, Red Sox) and have-nots (Tampa Bay, Washington, Florida, Pittsburgh), but that divide is growing, it’s becoming more pronounced in a number of ways, and it needs to be addressed. The Yankees had a payroll of $190 million this year, the Red Sox $143 million, Tampa Bay $24 million. These teams play in the same division. I don’t give the Rays much of a chance next year. Or the year after that.

What’s more, teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox have changed their ways, rebuilding their farm systems from the ground up. No longer are prospects viewed as nothing more than trade bait for established veterans, but as the most valuable possible way to build a team. The Red Sox won this year with a rookie second baseman, a rookie outfielder, and three young pitchers who we developed through our minor league teams. This team is going to be even better next year. The Devil Rays will be about the same, though they might be a little bit worse.

The long-term ramifications look worse the more you consider them. The Red Sox had a huge payroll this year, but that’s not a financial stretch for them because they generated hordes of revenue from fielding a successful team. Winning the World Series three years ago spread Red Sox Nation across America, leading to extremely lucrative merchandising deals for Red Sox management. The success of those deal created more funds to pay players with, enabling management to throw money at players it didn’t need (see J.D. Drew, $70 million over 5 years), hoping that their contribution would push the team a little bit further. As it turned out, they were right, the team had yet another very successful year, finishing with the Sox winning the World Series - which only leads to further popularity, more merchandising and television revenue, and more money to throw at players. One of the major reasons that the Yankees can throw money at any player they see is that their massive capital-generating machine will make sure that the money is always there – and consistently fielding a winner makes for a solid marketing product.

The Cubs are just starting to realize this. Long the loveable losers, their management had always been happy just to remain The Friendly Confines, where you can see good old-fashioned baseball and enjoy the sunshine. Winning would just get in the way of their business plan, which was always just about being classic Americana. But their recent playoff runs have generated tons of revenue for the team, and management is just starting to make the connection that good team = popularity = money = better team = more popularity = more money. You’d think they would have seen this one sooner, but I suppose that’s part of what makes the Cubs the Cubs. At any rate, they’re taking it to heart: their payroll topped $100 million this year.

How then, is a smaller market team to compete? The old rules soon won’t apply anymore – it used to be that small-market teams focused on developing players and building teams from scratch, and hoping that enough stars would align to give them a shot at glory. Sure, it would only happen once every ten years or so, but those few years when it did happen would feel awfully good. But now the farm systems of the bigger teams either meet or exceed those of the small-market systems, and those teams will have no way to compete. They’re all doomed to permanent ignominy, without a chance of ever fielding a winner. It’s a tough road ahead.

Soon, the only teams with the potential to compete consistently will be highly marketable teams. The Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Angels, Dodgers, and Cubs will compete every year – in twenty years, one of those teams will be winning the World Series each year, no exceptions. The other teams will place in descending order of the size of their market; it will not vary from year to year, it will always be the same.

However, I’ve discovered a way out of this. It’s a brilliant marketing strategy which can only be used by one team, but that one team can ride it to greatness. One team – an preferably someone desperate, like the Pittsburgh Pirates – hires a truly extraordinary ad firm and starts to sell itself as America’s underdog. They make it trendy to root for the Pirates, not because the Pirates are any good, but because they are so tragically hopeless. The firm will convince people to feel bad for the Pirates, convince them that being a Pirates fan is the mark of someone with pathos and soul, who can bear the sufferings of an unfavorable market and rise above it. They will root for the Pirates because the Pirates have no money and therefore no chance. It is a classic story of the down-and-out, a real-life Rocky Balboa in black and yellow.

To Boston or Chicago natives, this story is starting to sound awfully familiar. But here is the crux of it: convincing America that it is an emotional prerequisite to root for the Pirates will actually make the Pirates a much better team, just like it did for the Red Sox and Cubs. They will sell much more merchandise, they will get much plusher TV deals, they will sell more tickets, they will become financially viable; which will lead them to fielding better and better teams each year, which will only lead to increased popularity. Soon it will be clear that buying a Pirates hat is more than just a symbol of your fandom, it’s giving your money to a worthy cause, helping a struggling organization fight back against the unfair economic climate that weighs it down. And we will feel united in this goal. Economic disparity will become the new Billy Goat curse. Economic disparity will become the new Curse of the Bambino. And we will conquer it together.

Frankly, I’m looking forward to it. If it ends up happening, I’ll be the first to purchase a commemorative “Fight The Establishment!” t-shirt with a snarling pirate across the chest. I’ll see you in line.