American Gangster: The Rise of Frank Lucas

American Gangster: The Rise of Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas is a very influential and successful black male figure in today's society who used a drug known as heroin to turn him into a millionaire. American Gangster (2007) is an outstanding movie based on the life of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and what it took for him to control the United States as a heroin kingpin, American Gangster was a film written by Steven Zaillian, and Mark Jacobson in 2007. In the late 1970's detective Richie Roberts used scheming tactics to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, who was smuggling heroin into the country from the Far East. Furthermore, the movie has more things right than it has wrong, and for that very reason it is a great historical movie.

The film American Gangster (2007) has a lot of resemblance to the actual life of Frank Lucas. Frank Lucas actually lived a life of crime and used money as well as drugs to build an empire. One real life example that was shown was detective Richie Roberts really turned in $1,000,000 in drug money found from Frank Lucas. Frank Lucas is the most dangerous man walking the streets of our city (Roberts). Richie Roberts also said that he did get some heat for turning in the money, but he didn't become a dirty cop around his fellow officers like displayed in the movie ("American Gangster"). Also, a big accuracy that was proven to be true was detective Richie Roberts's private investigator partner really did become a junkie, "One of my partners did, yeah," (qtd. by Roberts).

Another accurate scene in American Gangster is Frank's wife Julie Lucas (Lymari Nadal), who decided to really buy Frank the chinchilla coat and hat which he at first thought was her new jacket. Law enforcement certainly knew of him and his people but they weren't sure who he was and what he was up too until March 8, 1971. On that day Frank made a bad decision by deciding to wear the chinchilla coat and hat to the March 8, 1971 Frazier vs. Ali fight at Madison Square Garden in New York. The detectives in attendance at the fight noticed Frank, but what really made him stand out was The Lucas's seats were closer than those of the Italian Mafia which were drawing even more interest to Frank Lucas. Frank is so convinced that the chinchilla coat is what led the police to take note of him and start up an undercover sting.

There are other truthful aspects to the movie. Frank really smuggled heroin from Vietnam in coffins of dead servicemen. In the 2000 New York Magazine article "The Return of Superfly" by Mark Jacobson, Frank answered this by saying, "We did it, all right...ha, ha, ha... Who the hell is gonna look in a dead soldier's coffin? Ha ha ha." ("American Gangster") Frank also stated that he and his Southeast Asian contact, a cousin's husband, flew a carpenter from North Carolina over to Bangkok to