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. American Gangster status seems be what has been dubbed by some critics as the black Scarface. As Ridley Scott s new film details, this isn t really the case aside from the point of rose up from nothing became something through crime , which could be said about almost every gangster film including the Godfather. Here Scott and screenwriter Steve Zaillian, without calling attention to it ala Paul Haggis, have made a film about class issues underneath the typical gangster-movie form. Even more than the Departed, one sees as the film goes on an environment of paradox: Frank Lucas was a low-life, a killer, a ruthless thug, and at the same time found time to take his mother to church every Sunday and gave out turkeys to folks in the neighborhood while providing them enough dope to die off in the process. In fact, Scarface has got nothing on Frank Lucas when it comes to moral complexity: here s a man who did rise up out of poverty, learned the stakes of gang life as a driver for the Harlem boss for fifteen years, and then after he died cut out the middle-man as an importer of the freshest product of heroin right out of Vietnam. Then through this there s a whole other on the surface American Gangster ; scott and zaillian could have made it simply a saga of betrayals and investigation via Richie Roberts. But the side that one saw in Serpico is amplified here- it becomes all the more engrossing to see how the crooked cops and honest gangster Lucas were linked together, which also leads to an ending that amps up the interest. Lucas didn t get out like Henry Hill, but a good man all the same? Probably not (he ended up in jail again, as the film doesn t point out).  ,

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