Just Say Noir

Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson was a poet, philosopher, and the biggest gangster in Harlem. And like a good WTO protester, he hated not just cops but goliath corporate interests shoving the little guy suppliers to the fringes. After Bumpy’s (Clarence Williams III) death, his driver and protégée Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) took over and adopted both sides of the Janus head worn by folk hero thugs: Both gave free frozen turkeys to the poor but felt nothing about shooting a man in the head. Where Lucas differed is that he modeled his drug empire after Wal-Mart: His Blue Magic ™ heroin was double strength and half price. It was imported pure from the jungles of Southeast Asia where Chiang Kai-shek’s men packed it up and gave it to US soldiers who shipped it to Fort Bragg in military airplanes. (Shocking? Check the news from Afghanistan.) At his peak during the Nixon administration, Lucas’ monopoly pulled in a million a day—and nearly that number in enemies as his lion’s share of the market pushed the Italian mafia to the margins. 

It’s about time Washington took on a role that wasn’t smothered in suffering nobility, but his carriage and strength give dignity to a man who was indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands and is now dismissed by his peers (including Johnson’s widow) as a blowhard. And director Ridley Scott and writer Steven Zaillian—to the credit of the film’s murky morality—let Lucas’ character have his say. The oldest of six poor North Carolinan brothers, young Lucas watched his 12-year-old cousin get murdered by a white posse. (Here, they’re cops; in real life, the KKK.) When he left home to come of age as a teenager in New York City, Lucas looked around and saw the whole world was cracked. Most of the cops were on his boss’ dole. And many of the politicians and judges, too. But while his community was grounded on a strong and explicit code of ethics—even if it was steal from me, I set you on fire—gave his society footing, the men with badges like extortionist special investigator Trupo (Josh Brolin, with a sleazy moustache) were the dirtier blackmailing sleazebags. I mean, they even shot people’s pets.

Jersey police officer Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe)—the man who vows to bring Blue Magic down—looks and acts like one of those slimeballs. (Scott’s attention to period detail delights in his wrinkled Hawaiian shirts.) But though he’s an adulterer, a hothead, and a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, Roberts has just enough of a moral center to not lie about his misdeeds. Which is why after finding $987,000 in cash from a bookie’s trunk, he forces partner Campizi (Kevin Corrigan) to turn it in causing both to become NYPD pariahs. And like seemingly everyone else in the ‘70s—including one-third of all Vietnam soldiers—Campizi’s an addict, with most of his product coming from Lucas’ topless go-go opium factory in a grimy tenement that’s as visually imposing as the Tyrell Co. headquarters in Blade Runner.

There are bullets and blood and dead junkies in Scott’s taut and well-plotted noir. But the real drama is Richie and Lucas’ equally compelling, yet mutually exclusive, need to prove themselves to all the corrupt cops who want to bring them down. When they finally meet near the ending, the scene avoids a Heat-like sizzle for a battle of the minds that’s not blockbuster combustible but morally complicated. Scott’s not interested in fireworks but small implosions of the soul and ego. At heart, Lucas’ dangerous, but good-hearted patriarch is just someone who’s over-subscribed to the American Dream. He wants to give his family—including dear old momma (Ruby Dee) and new wife Miss Puerto Rico (Lymari Nadal)—the perfect Thanksgiving feast while misanthropic Richie settles for slapping potato chips on Wonder Bread. And when Richie tells Lucas that the Italian mafia hates what he represents—the progress of a black entrepreneur—Scott’s provocatively toying with our liberal good intentions. Maybe too much as in his epilogue, Lucas’ real-life release and drug-related re-arrest are combined in to a single sentence lest we leave the theater aware that thugs don’t easily reform. Still, it’s hard not to root a little for an underdog-turned-smack-baron who wants so much to play by the rules that he invests his money in a plantation home and tweeds, a straight-shooting thug following the corporate manual to such a degree that when a rival slanger (Cuba Gooding Jr.) tries to mess with his product, he growls self-righteously, “My stuff is like Pepsi—it’s a brand name, I stand by it.”