Before getting to my review of Ridley’s Scott’s prestige gangster picture you should read Jeremy Smith’s article on the use of pop music in cinema.

“Ten years after the triumph of Mean Streets, the wedding of the image to popular music was now an industry in and of itself.

For true connoisseurs of cinema and music, the cheapening of this marriage has not completely eroded its ability to inspire. Until the failure of Bringing Out the Dead, Scorsese was still astonishing with counterintuitive uses of classic pop songs, his master thesis being Good fellas. From Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches” to Sid Vicious warbling “My Way” over the closing credits, the film is a miraculous blending of musical eras and genres.”

Smith says it better than I ever could about the great directors and what makes their use of music so definitive. Scorsese, Tarantino and the Andersons may make it look easy but their imitators fail miserably when they follow suit (see Michael Bay’s use of “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” in Transformers for a true embarrasment).

The wedding of film and pop music seems obvious but the best examples are usually counterintuitive gambles. Compare “I’m a believer” in Shrek to the same song used in Blood Simple. In the hands of a great director a scene can change the way we listen to a song. As wine with food, the masters can use cinema to accentuate a hidden dimension of a song.
And that’s why Ridley Scott does not belong in the top tier of American filmmakers. He is an imitator not an innovator. In American Gangster we watch him again and again settle for the obvious choice, the more heavy handedly a song can underscore a scene the better. From “White Christmas” played ironically over junkies shooting up on Christmas to “Amazing Grace” accompanying Frank Lucas’s downfall to whatever else I’m forgetting, Scott repeatedly falls short of the example set by the masters. And the worst transgression of all is his use of “101st street” to score a drug dealing montage, sorry but after Jackie Brown that song should be retired from general use.

American Gangster is a well made and really entertaining movie. It’s a biopic that documents the success of Harlem drug dealer Frank Lucas in the 70’s. Denzel Washington plays Lucas and Russel Crowe plays the cop who brings down his empire. It’s a film that I don’t hesitate to recommend, and at times it approaches the profound. But there’s a long and proud tradition of great American crime films and I would definitely not include American Gangster in that tradition.
Among the films successes is it’s detailed depiction of a large scale sting operation. The film documents the case built against Lucas bit by bit and the strange progression of false starts, set backs and breakthroughs, many of the happy accidents, that broke the case open. It does this faithfully without ever degenerating to a tedious lecture (see Syrianna).
I particularly like Denzel Washington in the film. Frank Lucas is a character with a lot of inner turmoil but he’s not the sort of person to emote . Washington communicates the character in a subtle and guarded away.
Both Densely and Russel Crowe are great actors and they do good work but as good as they are both these performances felt familiar like reminders of characters we’ve already met. As much as I appreciated Denzel’s character it was never as larger than life or as effortlessly imposing as his corrupt cop in Training Day.

In fact every casting choice is a minor epiphany but none really excelled in their role (strike that; fucking Josh Brolin is great as the film’s true villian).

Ridley Scott’s style is like that. In Black Hawk Down he seemed more interested in mimicking the language of Saving Private Ryan than in telling his own story. Matchstick Men was an unspectacular addition to the con man genre. I guess people like Gladiator but I see it as a modest accomplishment at best. I’m not denying that he’s made great films. But Blade Runner (which is currently experiencing a fall from grace, at least among critics) and Alien were early in his career, and I feel like his best is way behind him. American Gangster borrows a page from Scorsece here, Spike Lee there, it succeeds without advancing the vocabulary of the gangster genre. Scott is well versed in the lexicon of cinema which he borrows from ably but he adds nothing to the genres in which he works. Since Blade Runner 25 years ago even his best films remind me of great films without being great themselves.

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