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EXTRAS FEATURE

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AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007) Directed by Ridley Scott

being either jailed or under indictment. By informing, Lucas would only serve five years in prison. The story of Frank Lucas first appeared in New York Magazine. Soon after its publication, Steve Zaillian wrote a screenplay based on the article, which prompted producer Brian Grazer to buy the movie rights. Antoine Fuqua was originally set to direct the film in 2004 with Denzel Washington and Benicio Del Toro starring, but Universal Pictures pulled the plug due to budget concerns. Following a script rewrite that resulted in a more modest budget, the project was green-lit again with Ridley Scott directing and Washington rehired as Frank Lucas, with Russell Crowe cast as Richie Roberts. Filmed in the five boroughs of NewYork City, Scott had major problems in recreating the Harlem of the early 1970s. He watched William Friedkin's 1971 movie The French Connection umpteen times and then tried to locate those areas of NewYork that had not changed too much in four decades. Scott would later state that resulted in 360 scenes filmed in 180 different locations. The vagaries of race, class and money formed

the basis of Scott's film and also the respectful relationship between the Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts characters. The par excellence of Washington's prowess as an actor is once again displayed in this production, where he depicts Lucas as a charismatic and complicated figure akin to the Michael Corleone Godfather character. There are also numerous memorable scenes throughout the film, such as when Richie finds a stash of a million dollars of drug money and returns it to the precinct and records it. The angry looks he receives from the less honest precinct cops prompts Richie's partner to tell him, "Cops kill cops they can't trust". Black mobster Tango (Idris Elba) demands territorial payment after Bumpy Johnson's death, which angers Lucas so much that he walks up to him in the street and shoots him in the head and then calmly returns to a restaurant to finish his meal. And corrupt Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin), who also tries to shake down Lucas by demanding $10,000 a month, gets instead his prized Mustang Shelby car blown up in his own driveway. American Gangster is a classic crime-thriller and received two Academy Award nominations. Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) and his team raid a warehouse belonging to Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas (DenzelWashington) and his Country Boys stride through Harlem

T he notorious Black mobster Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson – known to the local populace as the "Robin Hood of Harlem" – operated in the New York borough from the 1920s through to the 1960s. When Johnson suddenly died of a heart attack in 1968 whilst dining in his favourite restaurant, his young mentor Frank Lucas inherited Johnson's drug business. Soon after, Lucas, who liked to call himself "Super Fly", cemented his legend by purporting to be the first African American drug lord to break away from the NewYork heroin suppliers, La Cosa Nostra (Italian Mafia). Lucas had the foresight and nerve to establish a direct relationship with Chinese heroin suppliers in Thailand and by doing so, developed the Southeast Asia heroin pipeline. He arranged for thousands of kilos of heroin to be shipped in the false bottoms of US soldiers' temporary coffins, directly from the killing fields of Vietnam onto the streets of NewYork/ New Jersey. A strong believer in blood loyalty, Lucas brought his brothers and cousins up from North Carolina to handle sales and distribution, naming them his "Country Boys". By bypassing the middle-men, Lucas became a big-time drug trafficker, which made him powerful but also brought him to the attention of the Special Investigation Unit – NYPD's elite detective squad led by a dedicated and honest policeman

Lucas calmly shootsTango (Idris Elba) on a Harlem street

named Richie Roberts. Acting on a tip from jealous East Harlem members of the La Cosa Nostra, Lucas was arrested and charged with drug trafficking. But rather than spending the rest of his life in prison, he played his last card and began a controversial career as an informant. He helped Roberts and his SI unit make cast-iron cases against a number of other drug kingpins, corrupt attorneys and on-the-take New York cops. This resulted in 43 of NewYork's finest

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30 DECEMBER 2021

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