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American Gangster (2007)
Sprawling crime epic that plays it strictly by the numbers
I had this one sitting on my DVD shelf for a while. For some reason, I could never drum up much enthusiasm to watch it. Well, it's another decent if ultimately perfunctory effort from Ridley Scott. Pretty much the same deal as the last 5,000 or so films he's done. You won't finish watching this and think "Wow, that was a really bad film", but you'll probably be left with the vague sense that the 2 and a 1/2 hours viewing time might've been better spent doing something else. That's quite a plummet in quality for the visionary maverick behind Alien and Bladerunner. I could watch those films over and over again (and do). But I could never imagine bothering to give American Gangster a second viewing.
Finding precise fault with the film is not particularly easy. On the surface at least, it's a well constructed movie and Scott does a good job in weaving the disparate pieces of the sprawling narrative together. On a technical level, American Gangster is pretty much flawless, albeit in a style so well worn that we could politely file it away in a drawer labeled "serious adult drama" and then forget about it.
And therein lies the problem. There is nothing you will see in American Gangster that smacks of genuine inspiration. Scott is attempting to give us a modern American crime epic, but what he's really delivering is the standard set of movie archetypes that are now endemic to the genre. Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas is the smart, ruthless and fast rising crime lord who will eventually see his world come crashing down around him. Russell Crowe's Richie Roberts is the determined, incorruptible cop who lives and breathes to bring Lucas down, at the expense of neglecting his personal life. Pretty much the same deal you've seen in about a million other movies then.
Both Crowe and Washington have received critical plaudits for their performances here, but it's about what you'd expect from two Hollywood heavyweights. In other words, you will never for a moment become totally immersed in these characters or their story. What you will see is a pair of Hollywood big-shots doing their level best to inflate what are actually fairly run of the mill roles into something of serious importance. You can practically hear these guys reciting their Oscar acceptance speeches somewhere off in the wings. It's more about affected posturing than it is about actual substance. Josh Brolin easily delivers the film's strongest performance as a ruthless and conniving cop on the take, Detective Trupo. You can really feel the oily malevolence behind the character. Considering Brolin's recent run of hot form, maybe that's not so surprising.
The story is told competently enough but fails to produce anything in the way of an emotional pay-off. Scott strives mightily to capture the grand themes of American crime cinema: greed, corruption, big business, redemption. You know the drill by now. Unfortunately, Scott just doesn't have anything fresh to say about these things. The truth of the matter is, guys like Scorsese, Coppola and David Chase have pretty much told us all we need to know about the American crime genre. If you're going to delve into this kind of territory, then you're going up against such heavyweight fare as the Godfather, Goodfellas and the Sopranos. And American Gangster doesn't really cut it in that kind of company. It's like the wannabe kid brother who gets left behind as the lookout while the older kids go off and do the really cool stuff.
Like so much of Scott's output in recent years, American Gangster has a curiously flat quality. It never really feels like it comes alive. You might say it's perfectly acceptable film making. Scott knows his trade well enough. Too well, maybe. It's just not an especially satisfying meal. It's two and a half hours of mildly interesting story that never strikes out of the genre confines and into fresh and engaging territory. There's much worse ways to waste your time than watching American Gangster, for sure, but if you're really looking for that crime epic fix, then you'd be better off re-watching your Godfather DVD or playing through Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Walking with Cavemen (2003)
Potentially good program ruined by ridiculous presentation
I wanted to enjoy the "Walking With Cavemen" series and there were moments that were informative and sufficiently awe inspiring. The atmosphere of a serious look at human evolution was severely compromised, however, by the completely ridiculous insertion of the presenter, Robert Winston, into the action, as if he was traveling back in time to witness our ancestors first hand. Not only does Robert Winston have a silly looking mustache and an annoying manner, but we have to watch him racing about the prehistoric world in a variety of vehicles, as if he was the star of an action movie. In several hilarious moments, we even see Winston exchanging "meaningful" glances with our ape-like ancestors. By the time I saw Winston hovering above Africa, observing our ancestors from a hot air balloon, I was about ready to chuck the DVD out of the window in despair.
Even if you take Winston out of the equation, this documentary is sketchy and implausible at best. The "script-writers" can't seem to resist building narratives out of the lives of our ancestors, for example, in the whole situation with "Lucy" and her baby, which is presented as if it was an actual scenario that took place. Every point that is made is essentially presented as "fact", and while I am no expert on the subject, I found myself immediately questioning how they could possibly know these things. For example, Winston seemed quite insistent that the Neanderthals had "no imagination". Philosophical speculation about imagination being an essential component of consciousness aside, the discoveries of what appear to be burial grounds, complete with residues of garlanded flowers about the skulls of dead Neanderthals, was completely ignored, and would suggest that the Neanderthals did indeed have sufficient imagination to at least have some sort of concept of an afterlife. The documentary went on and on, presenting little in the way of evidence for any of the assertions it put forward or the scenarios that were constructed, which were often embarrassingly cheesy and played for comic effect.
As a work of fiction and imagination, perhaps, the "documentary" did succeed on some level, and the overwhelmingly interesting nature of the subject matter could not be completely sabotaged by the manner of presentation. But even the make-up, acting and special effects employed in the depiction of our ancestors had not progressed to any significant degree from 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film made more than thirty years beforehand. Particularly laughable was a moment when several of our ancestors were confronted by a giant and angry gorilla in the prehistoric jungles of Asia, which played out like something from a fifties B-movie about Cavemen vs. the Monsters.
"Walking With Cavemen" is still a mildly entertaining and informative program, if not to be taken entirely seriously as a genuine presentation of science. The less heralded (and unfortunately still unavailable on DVD) Channel 4 presentation "Neanderthal", was a much better effort.