Harlem's Hero and Heroin

摘要

Ridley scott's "american Gangster" announces, with its grandiose title and epic sweep, that it wants to take its place among the "Godfathers" and "Scarfaces" as a seminal chronicle of criminal royalty. If it fails, it's not for lack of trying. It's based on the true story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a cool, brilliant, ambitious sharecropper's son from North Carolina who worked his way to the top of the New York drug trade in the 1970s. Unlike his great Harlem competitor, Nicky Barnes (Cuba Gooding Jr.), Lucas cut out the white middlemen—i.e., the Mafia. The Vietnam War was on, and Lucas got his heroin direct from the source in Southeast Asia, shipping his goods home on military planes in die coffins of American soldiers. His product, Blue Magic, outsold his rivals' because it was purer and cheaper. It was also deadlier.