[This follows up my first part, posted August 28.]
I am sorry if this seemed to take too long, but you may not care much anyway.
On this movie and the questions that were raised about its fidelity to real life, I think most of what I need to say, to address what I felt was pending, I already said in the August 28 posting.
Tough questions linger
No doubt, the story on which the movie is based is complex, and deals with matters of serious crime, multiple deaths by weapons or drug use, and the pain of drug-wrecked lives among people still living.
As one measure of the complexity, it is puzzling to me that the federal judge in Lucas’ 1970s trial, Sterling Johnson, Jr., is quoted in the Wikipedia article on the movie (and this is referenced to a January 17, 2008, Toronto Star article—see the end notes in my August 28 entry) as saying harshly that the film is “1 percent reality and 99 percent Hollywood.” He added that the real-life Lucas is “illiterate…vicious, violent…[and] everything Denzel Washington was not” (quoted as in the Toronto Star article). This suggests that the film, on balance, goes to wild lengths to fabricate.
Yet Judge Johnson commuted Lucas’ 1970s sentence to 15 years after his help with obtaining convictions, according to remarks on the DVD by film producer Nicholas Pileggi. This doesn’t mean that the judge was unreasonable to entertain views that varied quite a bit in attitude over a long time, given the enormity of Lucas’ malfeasance and the different views that a reasonable person can have about such things as a movie’s distortions of a matter in which one had been deeply involved. And, true, commuting a sentence is a legal determination, a professional decision, based on merits, and does not reflect that the judge need like or admire the person whose sentence is commuted. But when we assess this film and see such widely varying views from one person, a judge, who ought to have had relatively cool head and sophisticated judgment in the matter, how can we as laypeople, who see the wealth of information and the spectrum of strong emotions on Lucas, reach some kind of balanced viewpoint?
This may seem a rickety way to show the trouble with reaching a balanced viewpoint. My August 28 blog entry (Part 1) shows the difficulty in another way: so many accomplished professionals involved in the project, from Brian Grazer to Nicholas Pileggi to law professional Richard Roberts (see below) to many others—this plus the range of sources I cite (not an exhaustive list)—and still the story can be so far from the truth?
I think Part 1 of my review was fair to what information I could get, which was available on the DVD and online. I worked unexpectedly hard to be fair to a complex film.
A gracious viewpoint on Lucas came from a man who helped snare him, then helped him
Attorney Richard Roberts, in a summer 2012 court action concerned with Frank Lucas in Newark, N.J., said probably what is one chief thought to put to rest the issue of the truth about Lucas’ story: “There are a lot of people that love him and a lot of people that hate him. […] He’ll always have the stigma of heroin distribution. Let’s face it, a lot of people died because of what he sold.” (The article can be seen here.)
The newspaper article adds that, according to Roberts, “…Lucas paid his debt and served his time….” Roberts: “He also did good by helping put a lot of people behind bars. It was a hell of a run.”
This, plus similar comments by Roberts on the DVD extra, suggest that a key part of the story of Frank Lucas—how he helped bring a wealth of others to justice, in effect bringing a sort of dignity and expiation to his own personal position—is true (for instance, Roberts says on the DVD that over 150 convictions were obtained because of Lucas’ cooperation with law enforcement). This, of course, makes the overall story worth viewing (and, for one person’s view, was an enticement to Denzel Washington to play Frank’s part, which Washington comments on in the DVD making-of doc).
How much fiction?
The one remaining question, when we watch the elaborate movie, is how much of it—of a relatively macroscopic sort, never mind little details like who wore what and where a car was situated—is fictional, and how much is true to life? The lawsuit brought by members of the drug enforcement community may reflect the beef of only a segment of the total participants in Lucas’ overall scheme, both on the criminal and on the law side. (And the attempts to question the film’s truthfulness on both the Wikipedia article of the film and that on Lucas alone are quite similar, and seem in subtle ways, such as the not-full carefulness of scholarship, a slightly ham-handed way to “set things straight.”)
Sometimes a little common sense helps us. Say someone made a film of Josef Stalin that was “based on a true story” but had Stalin working in drag as a chorus girl for five years, and had him composing sonatas in Italy at another point? We would question the veracity of this film in general. With American Gangster, did Lucas do what it alleges he did in Southeast Asia to get his heroin supply going? It’s not totally implausible, but given complaints, hard to be definitive about.
I think Part 1 of my review gives enough food for thought about how the film shouldn’t be taken as gospel but draws a picture that in some broad respects is true enough and worth the time of those interested in mob-level crime.
