Review of AMERICAN GANGSTER

AMERICAN GANGSTER - STORY: A resourceful gangster apprentice builds a drug empire but violates his own rule of not being ostentatious, bringing upon himself as an adversary one of the few honest cops. Based on a true story from (I believe) the mid-seventies.
AMERICAN GANGSTER - MESSAGE: Follow your self-set policy which you know to be in your best interest. Sticking to your principles and being honest wins the day. Reward positive behavior. Hard work and study bring about competence. A better product at a cheaper price gives one the market share. Family is a good investment. Within and without one's own group, one must put in discipline to keep the show on the road.
AMERICAN GANGSTER - WIN: Positive qualities such as honesty and integrity in the good guy made sense because they paid off. This film did a good job of showing that drugs lead to addiction, misery, unconsciousness, stupidity and death. It promoted luxury as a large house, liquor, and prostitutes but since it was the bad guys who had the luxury, at least it was negative promotion. Given the nature of the anti-social personality, it was accurate that the bad guy would normally keep his cool, but when provoked would be angry and hurt or shoot someone.
AMERICAN GANGSTER - LOSE: It promoted breaking up a family rather than addressing the uncommunicated secrets from each other which may have patched things up. In other words, it sort of said that the wife wished her husband was a little less principled and she couldn't stay with him, which to me is a good reason to dig around and find out what she was doing that was less than upfront. The movie did imply that she would have looked the other way if the cop had been bribed, but I think there should have been shown more actual financial dishonesty on her part, which possibly had to be there for her to have this attitude. No moral compass visible, except by the cop's good actions -- the gangster went to church with his mom but didn't apply what they learned there; the cop didn't go to church but adhered to a moral code he somehow had. A gangster purveying so much misery on people would not have been that handsome -- criminality and wrongdoing take a toll on people.
AMERICAN GANGSTER - EFFECT ON ME: It made me want to stick to my principles despite those around me. It made me want to see an increase in the workable efforts to end drug pushing, drug addiction and criminal reform.
Sincerely,
Becky Mate
Writer
Script Consultant
www.virtueinthearts.com