Ruby Dee – The Magnificent 60s

I’ve seen this more times than The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974) put together, so, for me, yeah, this is the greatest gangster picture of all time. There’s always a snobbery involved in talking about your all-time favorite picture. In discussions, I often find that the movie people consider the best is rarely the one they watch the most. While I adore both Godfather pictures on an academic level, they now seem a haul, especially with the running time, overtly grandiose.

American Gangster, on the other hand, is fleet of foot. The dual storylines – Black gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) rising to the top, incorruptible cop Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) heading a team targeting New York’s drug kingpins – neatly intersect until nearly the end.

Director Ridley Scott has thrown off the shackles of sci fi and history – the demands of the grandiose and the visually cinematic and (in the sci fi) the problems of finding a new way to tell the Alien tale when the audience is waiting for the gore. Here he concentrates on narrative that, seemingly at every turn, exposes character. The story is a fascinating one at that. Nobody in law enforcement or at the higher echelons of Government went after Frank Lucas because nobody thought a Black gangster could build an empire to which even the Mafia kowtowed.

Oddly enough, the violence is muted. Scott does away with the need for repeated violence by an opening shot that sets the scene, Lucas setting fire to a snitch. This is more of a story about big business, that entrepreneurial spirit by which America sets so much store. And it’s a story about family. Lucas recruits all his brothers for the enterprise. Roberts is an outcast in the family of cops because he refuses to be corrupted.

But Roberts is no saint. He is accused by wife Laurie (Carla Gugino) of being scrupulously honest on that front only so he can be dishonest in the rest of his life, with his promiscuity and neglect of his son. When Lucas has the entire extended family round the table to celebrate Xmas (or Thanksgiving – there’s turkey involved, that’s all I know) in a mansion, Roberts is reduced to a tuna sandwich in his cramped apartment.

This is a time when gangsters were celebrities, safe in the knowledge that they were untouchable as long as they paid off the cops. Lucas shuns excess, determines not to draw attention to himself, which is why he remains hidden for so long, and it’s only when, to satisfy his wife, he wears an outrageous fur outfit that he comes to the attention of Roberts.

As the tale zips along, in the background we witness the drugs industry at work, the packaging, the distribution, the clashes between rivals, the deaths of junkies (including a cop), and Vietnam, where corrupt soldiers have made possible Lucas’s clever scheme to buy drugs at the source, cutting out the middle man and ensuring the purity of the product.

But Lucas is a corporate hero. He believes in the brand. A brand, he says, is a guarantee of quality, its dissipation the cause of a dispute with mobster Nicky Barnes (Cuba Gooding Jr.). In the corporate drugs world, the Mafia might think it has drawn Lucas into its tentacles, but it’s the other way round.

This all climaxes in the most dangerous manner – cinematically speaking – possible. John Ford owns the doorway, has done since The Searchers (1956). Christopher Nolan has also taken a tilt at that particular cinematic crown in The Odyssey (2026) when the gates of Troy open to reveal the gigantic figure of Agamemnon in black shining armor. Here, the doors opening are those of a church. Lucas steps out to see the street deserted except for the waiting Roberts.

There are other standout scenes in a movie that careers along so fast it scarcely needs them – Roberts dressing a corpse up to look alive to escape a mob, the shock of the cops when Roberts hands in rather than shares out a million bucks, Lucas burning the fur coat in rage, any time corrupt Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin) appears the scene is a standout, Roberts begging corrupt cops for his money back, Lucas interrupting his breakfast to execute a rival in the street, even the meet-cute with Lucas’s future wife Eva (Lymari Nadel) “can you let go of my hand?”

Lucas dresses immaculately but conservatively, Roberts is in jeans but Tupo, in black leather coat, exudes power. There’s very little moralizing, although various people complain about the loss of an accepted order. The drug dealers go down but there’s no mention of imprisonment for the hordes of soldiers and airmen who took money to feed drugs to their own soldiers or ship them to America.

The cast is absolutely terrific, Denzel Washington (The Equalizer 3, 2023) a commanding, cunning, figure, Russell Crowe (Gladiator, 1999) with his shuffling walk, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Backrooms, 2026) and Josh Brolin (Weapons, 2025) as the most arrogant of the corrupt cops. Supporting roles are filled by the likes of John Hawkes (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, 2017) , Carla Gugino (Watchmen, 2009), Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire, 1996), Armand Assante (Blowtorch, 2016), Idris Elba (Heads of State, 2025) and Ruby Dee (A Thousand Words, 2012). Written by Steve Zaillian (The Irishman, 2019) based on an article by Mark Jacobson.

There’s one other stunning element that needs mentioning – the music by Marc Streitenfeld (Prometheus, 2012). This must be the most self-effacing score ever to grace a gangster picture.

If this has been made today, the trailers would be acclaiming the Oscar achievements of the actors – the tally comes to three winners and three nominees. Next year, when this is due a 20^th anni reissue maybe that will be the promotional tag.

I might well be tempted to watch it again tonight.

While a misplaced attempt to relocate John Ford’s Oscar-winning The Informer (1935) to Cleveland, Ohio, after the funeral of Martin Luther King, director Jules Dassin more than makes up for it with his exploration of black militancy and racial conflict. The basic story of unemployed alcoholic Tank (Julian Mayfield) trying to regain the favor of local activist committee led by B.G. (Raymond St Jacques) is less interesting than the revolutionary backdrop.

Dassin was suited to uncovering the seamy side of life having helmed film noirs Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948) and while in the 1960s concentrating on dramas he remained best-known for heist pictures Rififi (1955) and Topkapi (1964) so it was almost a given that this movie would feature a robbery. Tank was supposed to be part of a team, led by Johnny Wells (Max Julien), hijacking guns, but he’s too drunk to help, and during the robbery after a guard is killed the finger points at Johnny.

*Above: American poster. Below: the French version.*

Assailed for his lack of maintenance by Laurie (Ruby Dee), mother of his kids, who subsists on welfare and prostitution, Tank considers informing on Johnny and picking up the $1,000 reward. So the story becomes a question of whether he will succumb to temptation.

But that’s really just a MacGuffin for an insight into the problems facing the poverty-stricken black population and the armed response many feel is the only way to resolve such issues. Several outstanding scenes depict the raw emotions of people trapped in this lifestyle. The opening scene, showing the funeral of Martin Luther King, became a clarion call for violence. Laurie is humiliated by a welfare officer. Police attempting to arrest Johnny are met with a fusillade of bottles.

The case for armed insurrection is made abundantly clear. The black population is continually oppressed, not just by police violence, but being told they lack the skills for a rewarding job. “When you’re born black, you’re born dead.” B.G. rejects the offer of assistance of white civil rights activists. Not all the locals are underdogs. Clarence (Roscoe Lee Brown), with an apartment lined with bookshelves and wearing fine clothes, does very well out of his arrangements with the police and the black welfare officer clearly gets a kick out of his power to possibly disbar Laurie from receiving financial assistance. While it might have proved more incendiary at the time, it’s impossible to miss the injustice portrayed. It was almost a wake-up call for the ruling authorities that there existed a growing underground force determined to achieve equality through violence if necessary. The idea of an organised group, rather than a shambolic mob, is the other clear message.

Any actor would baulk at the prospect of matching the Oscar-winning performance of Victor McLaglen in the Ford original and surely no director would entrust the task to an inexperienced actor like Julian Mayfield whose only previous screen credit was a decade before in Virgin Island (1958). Mayfield finds it impossible to conjure up the pathos required and mostly appears as a bumbling fool.

This is despite the movie going out of its way to make Tank appear more sympathetic. He could easily claim he was blackmailed into informing by wealthy stool pigeon Clarence who holds compromising photographs. But, equally, the brotherhood, should it become aware of Clarence’s activities, would surely come down on him hard. Johnny absolves Tank of responsibility for not participating in the robbery, recognizing that while the man’s bulk was useful in the past, he lacks the mind-set for robbery. And he must stay away from Laurie otherwise she will lose her welfare.

But the rest of the cast is outstanding. Raymond St Jacques (If He Hollers, Let Him Go, 1968) stands supreme as an imposing Malcolm X figure. Roscoe Lee Brown (Topaz, 1969) is persuasive as a confident gay informer. Activist Ruby Dee (The Incident, 1967) is good, too. And there is strong support from Frank Silvera (Guns of The Magnificent Seven, 1969), Max Julien, best known later for The Mack (1973), and in her movie debut Janet MacLachlan giving a hint of the acting skills that would win her an Oscar nomination for Maurie (1973)

Perhaps the most important element of the picture was the screenplay, a collaboration between Julian Mayfield, Ruby Dee and Jules Dassin, the involvement of the first two ensuring that the main targets were well and truly hit. Dassin ensures that the movie never loses its way, tension kept high by the hunt for Johnny, the personal dilemma of Tank and the various confrontations with B.G. Great contemporary score by Booker T.

This is a movie that still stands up, not just because of its fearless delineating of the times, but from the suspicion that not enough has changed in the abject poverty to which so many are condemned.

There’s a very decent print available on Youtube.

Tag: Ruby Dee

American Gangster (2007) *****

Uptight (1968) ****