Denzil Washington’s new flick American Gangster is great. He plays Frank Lucas, the founder of a massive drugs empire in ’70s New York by importing direct from Vietnam through bent military officers and, thereby, supplying a cheaper but purer product than his competitors. Russell Crowe playes the enlightened detective who proves his eventual nemesis. It is based on a true story. By the time he went to prison in the 80s, Frank Lucas was worth $250 million.
The film has four political (broadly construing that word) points:
1. While the devestation Frank Lucas caused to the lives of 100s or 1000s is made plain, it was only possible because of the co-operation of corruptable military and police officers.
A reminder that we cannot beat crime in society, if we fail to purge crime or misbehaviour within the institutions of the state.
2. Towards the end of the film, Crowe suggests to Washington that the reason the state and traditional Italian gangsters are pleased to see him go down is that as a black gangster he is a threatening symbol of racial progress. Washington dismisses this as garbage. Is race imposed too often as an explanatory theory?
3. Washington’s character is portrayed as an incredibly strategic thinker, highly empathic, and determined. He could have been a success in a legal business (or in politics) but the suggestion is that because of the world he fell into as a young age this never occured to him. No doubt it’s harder to seriously consider a particular career path unless people around you can give you the information you need to seriously consider it.
As Jo Grimond said, we want people to be free to make their own choices, but as a country we can in fact do things that help people make the right choices. That is not to do the socialist thing of making choices for people. But is not to do the conservative thing of expecting choice to operate properly without pushing back the dark jungle of ignorance or watering the barren deserts of poverty in which people are born.
4. The gangsters in the film protect themselves not only by bribing agents of the state but buying popular support by distribuiting a share of their profits to “the community”. That’s the tactic of the tyrannies everywhere: profit for the regime extracted from one group of people while buying off the complicity of others, i.e. screwing over a minority but keeping enough of a majority onside to get away with it.
It’s why governments need opponents who will appeal not just to the aggrieved minority but to the better angels of the nature of the other people, people who will give the nation a conscience and we need constitutional safeguards to ensure that rule by the majority cannot become mistreatment of one section or class.
Films like this, which deal with the effect people can have on vast numbers of others and the interaction between citizens and state are really more political than explicitly political films about politicians. “And why not?” as Barry Norman used to say.
Sincere thanks to the reader of this blog who suggested seeing American Gangster after we couldn’t get into Beowulf- it was a very good suggestion!
