'American Gangster'

Common, Denzel Washington, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Idris Elba in a scene from "American Gangster."

Universal Pictures

I just saw the screening tonight; this will definitely make waves.

We're scheduled to talk soon with Common and the Rza (who are both hip-hop artists and play a member of a gangster crime family and a drug task force cop, respectively). I say "scheduled" because you never know what will happen with movie junket/celeb interviews.

Anyhow: the movie is luscious. It gets the greasy gleam of New York streets after the rain right, and the grumpy clackity clack of the bridges. Drug use is widespread in the movie, and horrible. The way heroin use plays out in the film leaves no doubt as to the destruction of addiction, from the hoarse cries of babies in junk-users' arms to the scabs and sores and blood of shooting up. Denzel gets to Denzel it... the crooked smile, the finesse, the brooding. Russell gets to do his broke-down/stand-up working class hero thing. Neither star crosses the line to cartoonish. Both shine.

The way the hip-hop generation is used in the film is interesting ... it's chock-a-block of the crossover. I don't mean "crossover" as in hip-hop to pop, but the kind of Latifah/Cube crossover from music to movies. You have, in significant supporting roles, the Rza, Common, and TI. Common plays TI's dad.

I had to think: could Common have a son as old as TI? So I googled. Common is 35; TI -- and it's hard to believe this -- is a skinny, baby-faced 27-year-old, who in the movie, plausibly plays a late teen or early twenty-something. If I didn't know who Common and TI were (and no doubt many of the audience members won't), I'm not sure whether I would have questioned it. Common plays older. It doesn't wash to me, but you make up your own mind.

Of course, TI is, in real life, having gun troubles. That fact puts its own sly reverb on the gangsta mystique, a conceit that has its due and its day in this film; but also a conceit that gets twisted, bent, refracted, and imploded. Just like real crime. Just like real life. Only with better lighting.

Farai Chideya

1:45 AM ET | 10-17-2007 | permalink

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