American Gangsters, 10/21.

Leroy "Nicky" Barnes "was the heroin kingpin, dubbed by some the Al Capone of Harlem, an underworld superstar who had tauntingly posed for the cover of the New York Times Magazine in 1977 with the headline 'Mister Untouchable,'" writes Robert W Welkos in the Los Angeles Times. "Barnes, who is now 74, is the subject of a documentary from director Marc Levin titled Mr Untouchable." Its "premiere comes only a week before the arrival of director Ridley Scott's feature-length film American Gangster starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Washington plays Frank Lucas, who in real life was a key competitor of Barnes. Lucas, who became a prosecution witness, is also now a free man. Even today, debate rages over which of the two was Harlem's bigger drug kingpin. 'And there was a third guy too,' Levin pointed out. 'His name was Frank Matthews. [He] was also a legendary character. No one knows what happened with him, whether he escaped, ended up living in a villa in Africa, or if he was killed.... They were contemporaries and, in a sense, I guess, business competitors."

Updated through 10/26.

As for American Gangster, Kirk Honeycutt's got a review for the Hollywood Reporter: "[T]his is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from The Godfather and Serpico to Superfly and Shaft. But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars."

Updates: American Gangster "is absorbing, exciting at times and undeniably entertaining, and is poised to be a major commercial hit. But great it's not," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "Maximizing a gritty big-city story requires a credibility composed of thousands of small details, and this is one area where a citizen-of-the-world director like Scott can't excel. It's akin to asking Lumet or Scorsese to make a definitive film about crime in 70s Newcastle - they could do a respectable, even exciting job of it, but it probably wouldn't ring deeply true."

Jeffrey Wells respectfully disagrees: "But it does ring true. For me, anyway. Brits are famous for delivering American-set crime dramas with great chops and authenticity (as Karel Reisz managed with Who'll Stop the Rain and John Boorman did with Point Blank), and this is one of those cases. I believed every New York second of American Gangster. For my money, Scott has not only skillfully chanelled Lumet and Scorsese but the entire hallowed universe of 70s urban filmmaking itself."

Back to Mr Untouchable. Levin "may avoid outright idol-worship, but any restraint exhibited by his film is disingenuous, since its preference for gangster tall tales over law enforcement realities - as well as its goofily staged interviews with Barnes himself - reveals an uninhibited, fawning fascination with the infamous criminal," writes Nick Schager at Slant.

Update, 10/23: Reviewing Mr Untouchable for the Voice, Michelle Orange notes "the uneasy balance that this film strikes between telling the straight story and glorifying a stone-cold snake in the grass."

Update, 10/24: Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine on American Gangster: "Somehow the fact that Jay-Z, inspired by a sneak preview, has returned to record a tribute album, seems entirely apt for this handsomely mounted display of well-rehearsed ironies and insights."

Update, 10/25: At the Reeler, Vadim Rizov finds Mr Untouchable "so blinkered and unthinking (and its filmmakers so imaginatively bankrupt) in portraying its title subject that a potentially unique story is retrospectively flattened into yet another gangsta crime saga, blander than the blandest of 50 Cent songs.... Mr Untouchable's ultimate achievement is to flatten a real, colorful life into something less original than its fictional equivalent. Scarface is the documentary; this is the pale imitation."

Updates, 10/26: "Mr Levin's film, though it duly includes testimony from police officers, prosecutors and journalists who covered the crime beat in those bad old New York days - how filmmakers seem to miss them - takes a tolerant, even admiring view of its subject" and "clings to the standard hip-hop mythology of the pusher as entrepreneur, rebel, celebrity and folk hero," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "That narrative is complicated somewhat by the fact that Mr Barnes was also a snitch" and "a true capitalist hustler who will use anyone, criminal, lawyer or documentary filmmaker, to serve his own interests."

"Levin makes sure to highlight the devastating human cost of the heroin epidemic, yet the gorgeous girls, fancy clothes, and expensive cars on display illustrate that the wages of sin can be pretty damned irresistible," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "If Barnes ultimately emerges as a heartless, duplicitous villain, he's nevertheless got the devil's slippery, seductive charm."

The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan finds it "less a dispassionate examination than a celebratory infomercial on its central character."

"It isn't that American Gangster is an empirically bad film or is even unenjoyable," writes Brandon Fibbs at cinemaattraction. "While the lights are down and the screen is aglow, you're sure to be perfectly entertained. But don't be surprised if, when you walk out of the theater, you forget the film ever existed."

Posted by dwhudson at October 21, 2007 6:57 AM