Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

American Gangster (2007) -vs- Hoodlum (1997)

Bullets Fly... People Die
Review by Mark Sanchez

The Smackdown. Audiences love gangsters on film. They appeared as early as 1912 in D.W. Griffith's Musketeers of Pig Alley. Little Caesar, Public Enemy and Scarface set the tone in the early 1930s for generations of hard-talking hard guys on film: Rico Bandello, Duke Mantee, Vito Corleone, Tony Montana, Tony Soprano, Frank Costello. Now, there's Frank Lucas. He's the American Gangster grossing more than 80 million dollars the past two weekends. Lucas ran the drug business in Harlem in the 1970s. His story from director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Hannibal) presents fictionalized fact and has elements linking it with Bill Duke's Harlem mobster tale from 1997, Hoodlum. Here's our Smackdown: Which film draws the more compelling picture about personal corruption as bullets fly and people die.

"Tell you what, Frank, give me what I want and I'll throw in the tape deck."

The Challenger. American Gangster shows Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) emerging from the shadows on the death of his hoodlum mentor, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. The apprenticeship is over and Lucas hatches a plan to extend his hold over the heroin trade far beyond anything Bumpy could envision. He enforces his will through smarts, intimidation and murder. Lucas has family members strategically placed across the region. His involvement is largely unknown to authorities. By the mid-1970s his rule blankets upper Manhattan and Frank lives like some CEO with a trophy wife. A chinchilla coat she gives him draws the attention of drug cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) who begins connecting the dots. The contrast with Lucas is night and day: Richie's life is a mess, his wife is divorcing him, and he's an outcast in the station house because he didn't pocket a million dollars in unmarked bills seized during a bust. Their fates are firmly linked but ironically, Lucas and Roberts don't actually meet until late in the film. Frank Lucas is not the only bad guy snared by Roberts (that group also includes dirty cops). None of it might have happened if Roberts hadn't noticed Lucas wearing that gaudy chinchilla coat at the boxing match. Steven Zaillian adapted the screenplay from an article by Mark Jacobson.

American Gangster (2007) -vs- The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Family Values

The Smackdown. It can't be easy being a young criminal crime boss and drug lord, coming from a struggling underclass, living in the shadow of an even more powerful criminal. Both Frank Lucas and Michael Corleone step out on their own in "American Gangster" and "The Godfather, Part II" and become, in many ways, even more frightening than that which spawned them. Both killers also love their families (or say they do). This crime story Smackdown not only pits the great actors of their respective generations (Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro, Denzel Washington & Russell Crowe) against each other but two of the most accomplished directors: first Francis Ford Coppola, and now, Ridley Scott.

"Frank, I'm only sayin' the Italians pay on time. Just don't make me nostalgic for them, okay?'"

The Challenger. "American Gangster" is based on the true story of Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas who cornered the heroin market in his part of NYC about thirty years ago. In the script by Steve Zaillian directed by Ridley Scott, we see how Lucas made a staggering amount of money by being what he thought of as a  better businessman -- his H was twice as pure and twice as cheap as the competition on the streets, and he even branded it as "Blue Magic." Lucas, played to perfection by Denzel Washington, has that explosive coolness he manifested in "Training Day" and packaged into a film that feels, at times, epic by showing his roots as a driver, bodyguard and "collector" for another Harlem bad-ass (with class!) named Bumpy. Lucas, shall we say, has a couple of different sides to his personality: in the opening scene he sets a man on fire and empties a gun into him, but later he buys a mansion and moves his dirt poor family in with him. "Gangster" has a duality to its structure, too, in that almost equal screen time is given to the character of Richie Roberts, the squeaky-clean detective who eventually took Lucas down and two-thirds of the corrupt New York drug cops with him. Played by Russell Crowe, Roberts is our counter-point in more ways than good-vs-evil: his own family is falling apart, even as Lucas's is spending quality time together.

Crash (2005) -vs- Grand Canyon (1991)

Review by Bryce Zabel 

An ensemble drama, set in Los Angeles, highlighting the stormy state of race relations in the city. Yep, they made that movie in 1991 as Grand Canyon and again in 2005 as Crash.Here in Hollywood, I'm starting to get a lot of screening invites to see Crash, a film that's been on-the-circuit since last May, at least. This means that the people behind it smell Oscar and are starting to push hard.

"Everybody in this city's a f---in' racist, including me."

The fact that both films sound the same in the simple reductionism of their high concepts shows why you shouldn't play that game in deciding whether to see a film or not. These are definitely not the same movies.

I've lived in LA before, during and after the times of each of these films. Of course, Grand Canyon was made before the Rodney King verdict inspired riots of 1992. That probably explains why it had such a positive vibe at the end. The riots pretty much put that edge back on.

I showed the 1991 version to my kids, one of whom simply could not get through it and the other of whom simply could not fathom what the ending was all about with everybody staring out over the real Grand Canyon. I started to explain that it was all about how nature was bigger than all of us, making our petty issues like race seem so silly, except that about halfway through that argument, I wasn't even sure if I believed it.

Crash, on the other hand, is pretty grim stuff. Sandra Bullock has never been more shrill and looks like she needs Prozac. In the other film, Mary McDonnell looks like she needs to get off the stuff. I see all the flaws in Crash -- and there are a few -- but overall, I was much more compelled by its web of interlocking stories. Matt Dillon is phenomenal as a racist cop.

Let's face it. Crash has some problems but it feels more like life and Grand Canyon feels more like a movie. Plus, I met Paul Haggis at the Newport Beach Film Festival where his movie screened this year and after you've sipped a Cosmo with a filmmaker, you kind of owe him, at least in Hollywood.

Crash. Because what people are saying about race now is even more important than what they were saying about it then.