Denzel does it again. Seriously. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this one — I’m not really a Russell Crowe fan, for one thing, gangster movies aren’t really all that interesting to me in general, and it’s two hours and 37 minutes long besides. But it didn’t feel nearly that long (well, except for my backside getting sore), it isn’t quite a traditional gangster movie, and while I still don’t think Russell Crowe’s anyone I’d want to meet, he turns in a good acting job.
He’d have to be good to compare with Denzel, of course, though on the other hand, they don’t have many scenes together. For most of the film, you’re watching two movies. Denzel is Frank Lucas, a North Carolina boy who ended up in New York as driver and bodyguard to a Harlem crime boss. When the boss dies, every hood around tries to step into his shoes — but it’s Frank who succeeds. He learns a lesson from the big discount chain stores (which I think were probably pretty new in 1968, when the movie starts), and cuts out the middleman.
He travels to Bangkok, finds the guy who runs the poppy fields where the heroin comes from, and cuts a deal with him directly. Now Frank can afford to sell nearly pure heroin, and undercut all the other dealers. The other dealers don’t like this, of course, but after Frank shoots one of them in the head in broad daylight on a busy sidewalk, they don’t complain very much. That’s the really weird thing about this movie — Denzel’s kind of… evil. I mean, the first scene shows him setting a man on fire. He smacks his own brother’s head into a car window repeatedly. He’s a hateful, bad-tempered man. But somehow you don’t mind as much as you should.

One of the few times Denzel and Russell actually share the screen, so look closely.

In the other movie, Russell Crowe is cop-turning-lawyer Richie Roberts. It seems he’s one of about eight non-crooked cops in New Jersey. While following a bookie, he and his partner discover a huge pile of cash — $987,000, to be exact. But his partner doesn’t want to turn it in, because then all the other cops, who apparently routinely keep whatever money they find on the job, won’t trust them anymore. Richie turns it in anyway, and sure enough, the next time he calls in for backup in the Projects, there are mysteriously no units in the vicinity. I mean, really — if there aren’t cops there, what in the world are they all doing? I hope police forces have changed a lot since the sixties. Even the state district attorney uses some nasty racial slurs.
Anyway, because there are only eight honest cops, they all get put into the same unit — a new federally organized anti-drug task force. They don’t bother with street pushers or small amounts of drugs; they only want the suppliers and big bosses. So from that point, you know Russell and Denzel are fated to collide, but it’s still a lot of fun to watch it happening.
The rest of the cast is great. There’s Ruby Dee (“The Stand”) as Mamma Lucas; Josh Brolin doing a frighteningly good job as the King of the Crooked Cops; and my old friend Idris Elba (28 Weeks Later, The Reaping) in an unfortunately small part. I suspect some of his lines hit the cutting room floor, and probably the same is true of poor Cuba Gooding, Jr., who gets one substantial scene where he whines and complains, and spends the rest of the film appearing in the background now and then. It’s a fun scene, though — Frank compares his brand of heroin, Blue Magic, to Pepsi and General Mills in terms of brand recognition. I wonder if companies actually pay for that kind of product placement…?
The point is, it’s a good film. Four and a quarter idols of good, in fact. I’m still thinking about the last scene, which manages to make a huge impact without even any dialogue. It does that in a few places, actually, and I think those are the scenes that are going to stick the most, for better or worse. Most of those scenes aren’t for the squeamish, unsurprisingly, but they’re really powerful. And in spite of his almost offhand cruelty, you never quite give up on Frank, which might easily have happened with any other actor. At least he’s nice to his mother… though personally, I’d be afraid not to be nice to Ruby Dee.

I’ve been doing lots these last couple weeks. But not much made it up here… including 2 musicals. But here’s a small pile of things…
NewsSting – a simple news-y intro
Eyes Gone Wrong – an intense but reserved transition
Disco Sting – 1980’s Style intro
Darkness Speaks – unsettling transition
Bama Country – Taken as a request for a super rural country tune. It is listed as “Unclassifiable” just because I have only one country piece available. Nice fiddle, though the tremolo run didn’t turn out as well as I’d have liked.
Vibe Ace – Cool, cool hybrid
Folk Round – Sort of… medieval campfire-like.
Colossus – Ahh… this one’s cool… in that theatrical epic sense. You need to listen at least through one minute 52 seconds.

I already knew Ben Affleck couldn’t act. I’m still trying to decide if he can direct. He did manage to write a pretty good screenplay — some of the dialogue was a little awkward in places, but otherwise he did all right there, even without Matt Damon to help him. He had a good place to start, at least; I haven’t read the novel this movie was based on, but I know Dennis Lehane writes some pretty good stuff.
But let me back up for a minute. Casey Affleck can act reasonably well, and he’s the star of the piece, playing private detective Patrick Kenzie. He’s lived in the same Boston neighborhood all his life, and now he and his girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan, still trying desperately to live down The Heartbreak Kid) run a detective agency specializing in missing persons. I’m not sure why they gave him a partner, really… Angie’s there for many of the actual detecting scenes, but she says and does so little they could have taken her out entirely without ruining anything. So practically speaking, she’s just his girlfriend, and there she does a pretty good job with what really isn’t much of a part.
Anyway, the brother and sister-in-law of an old school friend of Patrick’s show up early one morning to hire him. Amanda, their four-year-old niece, has been kidnapped, and after three days the police have no solid leads. Angie’s against taking the case, but Patrick wants to, and you know he’ll win because he gets higher billing. And Patrick is aparently the person to hire for this sort of thing, because he knows everyone in the entire neighborhood. As more of Amanda’s mother’s sordid past is revealed, a local drug dealer becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance, and Patrick knows him. Patrick also knows his right hand man, a couple of other more “upscale” drug dealers, half the locals at the greasy tavern down the street, and a good portion of the police force as well.

Patrick detects, and Angie wonders where all her lines have gone.

The drug dealer (a man of Haitian origin who, for some unexplained and possibly inexplicable reason, goes by the nickname Cheese) initially denies knowing anything about the missing girl, but later changes his tune, and it’s about then that all hell breaks loose.
It’s also about then that the plot turns from something straightforward into a tangled mess. I sorted it out all right, but you really can’t let your mind wander here. Some cops begin to take center stage — there are a couple of places where it’s easy to forget about Patrick because other actors have taken over the screen. Of course, when the actors are Morgan Freeman (as police captain Jack Doyle) and Ed Harris (as police detective Remy Bressant), it’s easy to get pushed out of the way. Heck, I don’t think I’d even mind being pushed out of the way by them.
I’m going with three and a half idols. I’m kind of astonished that I’m ranking it that high, because quite frankly, I went into the theatre not expecting much. Maybe I’m just being too hard on poor Ben Affleck. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but I’m still just reeling slightly from Daredevil. And Pearl Harbor. But he did all right here. The film’s got a good feel to it — good as in realistic, because in the end there isn’t much good left in anyone or anything — and is pretty edgy in a very effective way. Like We Own the Night, it’s a shock when shots ring out, and just about everyone seems like someone you could meet at the local grocery store — though that’s not really a very comforting thought. And it asks awkward questions — Patrick’s still basically a good guy at the end, but neither he nor the audience knows if he’s done the right thing. Or even if there was a right thing. So yeah, definitely very realistic, for better or for worse…