Gothe's last words
American Gangster (2007)
menacing and visceral.
two observations about the film: the lighting and the sympathy.
was it the reel I saw, or did Sir Scott intentionally shoot the thing with so little light? half the time I couldn't see the expressions on their faces or the detail in the frame. I am alternately incensed and tickled -- angry because they really should know better (they paid Denzel and Russell a lot of fucking money to shoot them in shadows?) and amused because they got away with it ("it's art you philistine!").
the sympathy is more a writing thing -- the character of Lucas gets a lot in the way of "hero points" and the character of Roberts gets almost nothing. Roberts is on the side of justice, but no sophisticated viewer would say he was the "good" guy. by the same token, Lucas is the drug dealer, but it would be too reductive to call him the "bad" guy. an interesting decision -- a good one. it's the harder choice to follow, but there is more fertile territory to explore in a cop with a mess of a home life and a drugs dealer with a family.
the opening scene more or less sets the viewer up for what's to come: Lucas calmly pours fluid from a large metal box with a spigot over a cursing man tied to a chair.
another thing I quite appreciated was the layering that happened in many of the sequences -- in addition to the action (serving a subpoena), there are other things going on (the characters talk about how much lawyers and police get paid -- according to the script, detectives get paid more than prosecutors).