Trailer
Plot summary
In 1968, Frank Lucas serves as the right-hand man to Harlem mob boss Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. After Johnson dies of a heart attack, Frank sets up his own heroin business, buying straight from producers in Thailand and smuggling the drug into the United States through servicemen coming home from Vietnam. Sold as "Blue Magic," it is cheap and pure, and it pushes much of his competition out of the market. In Newark, detective Richie Roberts, who is studying for the bar exam, is shunned at his precinct after handing in close to a million dollars he came across in a mobster's car. Captain Lou Toback places him in charge of a task force aimed at major drug suppliers, and Roberts is also locked in a custody fight with his ex-wife.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about American Gangster (2007)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Universal canceled American Gangster in 2004 after firing director Antoine Fuqua four weeks before shooting was to begin; the cancellation cost the studio $30 million, including $20 million paid to Denzel Washington and $5 million to Benicio del Toro under pay-or-play deals.
- American Gangster was filmed in over 180 locations, mostly across New York City, setting the record for the highest number of filming locations of a movie.
- Producers brought gas masks to the Harlem shoot because of health hazards and sanitary concerns in the buildings Ridley Scott chose, and Scott said he "just walked in" and shot in the house.
- Denzel Washington pushed producer Brian Grazer to have Jay-Z score the film, but Grazer felt there wasn't enough for Jay-Z to do; after an advanced screening Jay-Z made a concept album also called American Gangster, recording tracks prompted by specific scenes.
- Three former DEA agents, Jack Toal, Gregory Korniloff and Louis Diaz, sued Universal claiming the film defamed them; US District Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed the suit, saying it failed to show a single person identifiable as a DEA agent, though she called the film's closing intertitle "wholly inaccurate".
- Richie Roberts, the real detective Denzel Washington's co-star Russell Crowe played, criticized the film for putting him in a custody battle when he never had a child, and called its portrayal of Frank Lucas "almost noble".
- Federal judge Sterling Johnson Jr., who helped arrest and try the real Frank Lucas, called the film "one percent reality and ninety-nine percent Hollywood" and described Lucas as "illiterate, vicious, violent, and everything Denzel Washington was not".
