American Gangster Season 1 DVD Review
Posted by Ryan Byers on 10.25.2007
Cocaine, murder, and prostitution highlight this BET docudrama. What more could a viewer possibly want?
American Gangster (not to be confused with the November 2007 theatrical release of the same name), is a documentary-style series produced by B.E.T. Each episode chronicles the career of a prolific African American crime kingpin and also explores the conditions which allowed him to become a criminal mastermind and prosper. It has become popular enough to spawn a second season, which has recently begun airing. There is no better way to evaluate a series like this than to examine the individual episodes, so let's delve in to that right away.
Episodes
Stanley "Tookie" Williams: Williams was the man behind the formation of the Crips, the largest street gag in the nation. Obviously Williams' early life of crime and ascension to the head of the gang are covered, but the far more interesting portion of the documentary covers his fall. He was ultimately sentenced to death for the murder of four individuals, although many are of the opinion that Williams was not responsible for these particular crimes, having been pegged with them simply because the government wanted to put him away for anything they could. While on death row, Williams seemingly reformed himself, dedicating his life to anti-gang activism and being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on six separate occasions. That was not enough, however, for governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant Williams clemency, ultimately leading to "Tookie" being executed on December 13, 2005. Overall, I'd say that the episode set a good tone to kick off the series, as it provided a balanced view of the subject's life, constantly acknowledging that his crimes were heinous but also posing serious and legitimate questions about whether his execution after his apparent reformation was just. My only issue with the show was that they seemed to focus far too much on an individual who Williams had mugged early in his criminal career. I can understand the need for a "victim" of Williams' crimes to be interviewed, but the individual in question seemed to have suffered relatively little compared to the victims of the larger crimes that Williams wrought. In that regard, it almost seemed as though the severity of Williams' criminal acts was being trivialized.
"Freeway" Ricky Ross: When crack cocaine was first introduced to inner-city Los Angeles, Ricky Ross was there to get in on the ground floor and make himself a fortune. However, this episode is less a profile of Ross and more an examination of exactly how crack became some popular in LA. Evidence behind one popular theory is presented heavily here, namely that the CIA allowed individuals with ties to Nicaraguan Contras to flood LA with the drug in an effort to fund the Contras' anti-communist activities. Long-time United States congresswoman Maxine Waters provides her views on that particular subject, as does a young John Kerry through the power of archival footage. Though this isn't the place for me to espouse my own views on the topic, I will say that I'm glad that the shows' producers decided to hit on such a sensitive and potentially controversial subject, as it shows that they're attempting to produce a documentary that can actually spark dialogue as opposed to trash television that exists only to gain viewers by exploiting criminal behavior.
Leroy "Nicky" Barnes: We move from crack to heroine, which was the drug heavily pushed by Leroy Barnes. Barnes predates Ross and Williams by a decade or two, and he became a drug kingpin in New York thanks to a tie with Italian-American organized crime that he developed while in prison. As with Williams, perhaps the most interesting part of Barnes' story occurs after he was imprisoned. At that time, he learned that one of his associates was having an affair with his wife, which resulted in Barnes becoming a witness for the government. The information with which he provided the feds resulted in numerous arrests and convictions, all of which were upheld on appeal. It was because of this that a young Rudolph Giuliani, then a United States Attorney, succeeded in having Barnes' life sentence greatly reduced. (Giuliani, like Kerry before him, is shown repeatedly through archival footage.) Barnes is apparently still alive and in the witness protection program, and he will be a character in the upcoming movie American Gangster, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. The thing that struck me most about this episode was that Barnes, like Williams, seemingly had a change of heart in prison and undid some of the wrongs caused by his prior actions. However, Williams' episode in the series portrayed him as a hero in his later years, while Barnes did not receive similar treatment. That left me scratching my head and wondering if there might be a bit of a double standard at play.
Troy & Dino Smith: We head from New York to San Francisco, and we head from organized crime to a three man outfit, as the Smith brothers and a series of rotating accomplices seemingly worked alone for the most part. The two brothers were old school burglars as opposed to the drug pushers or gang bangers like those featured in prior episodes. However, aside from that, the episode was very similar to prior efforts. Once again, the tales of what happened to the brothers after they wrapped up the majority of their criminal activities were far more interesting than the stories from when they were in their "primes." This was particularly true in the case of Dino who, after the brothers' final heist, assumed a false identity and rented an apartment in New York. That in and of itself doesn't sound too impressive, but American Gangster makes it great by going out and interviewing Smith's roommate at the time, a seemingly upper-class gentleman who had no clue that he was living with an ex-convict. Curiouser still is the story of how, despite some speculation that the brothers' final heist was aided by the owner of the jewelry story which was knocked over, no charges have been pressed against the man.
The Chambers Brothers: The Chambers clan, from rural Arkansas, relocated to Detroit and, upon doing so, became the biggest crack dealers in Detroit just as that drug was becoming popular in the inner city. The brothers' story actually gets lost a bit in the tale of Detroit's decline from a mecca for enterprising African Americans to a complete hellhole, but, in all honesty, what happened to the city is just as interesting as what happened to the men. Also notable in this episode is an explanation of just why Columbian drug cartels began exporting crack to the United States when their powder cocaine regime had been so profitable years before. (Turns out that it was the result of some political pressures that I never would have expected.) Key cameos in the episode come from Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator fame, who was a Detroit reporter covering the Chambers family during the height of their power and Bill Clinton, who is shown through archival footage accepting the democratic nomination for president in 1992. In his speech that night, the Chambers brothers actually managed to get themselves a mention.
Lorenzo "Fat Cat" Nichols: Well, we already saw how crack became the drug of choice in Los Angeles and Detroit. Let's take a look at its popularity in New York City! Frankly, after so much prior talk about crack, Nichols' story comes off as one that the series has already told us before, leaving me with the feeling that I didn't take too much away from it. However, it probably is a story that the series needed to tell, simply because the murders of a parole officer and a twenty-two year old rookie copy being connected to Nichols' outfit resulted in the federal government seriously ramping up its pursuit of drug dealers.
Special Features
Interview with the Son of Stanley "Tookie" Williams: Williams' son Travon sits down with the producers of American Gangster for an interview about his father, which lasts roughly fifty minutes. For something that is the same length as an episode of the series, there is surprisingly little editing. The younger Williams is definitely an individual who has mastered the spoken word and uses it as a means of getting his message across. Again, I don't think that a DVD review for an entertainment website is the appropriate place to launch in to my own thoughts on social and political issues, but it did seem like Travon was a little too willing to forgive the fact that his father's actions did result in the deaths of numerous individuals, even though he did have some good points about government hypocrisy and Tookie's reformation. All in all, the interview was very insightful and provided a voice that was noticeably absent from the original episode on Williams.
Extended Interviews: Clicking on this feature rolls a twenty-five minute series of deleted interview nuggets from five of the season's six episodes. (Extra clips from the Chambers Brothers bio are noticeably absent.) There's nothing as in-depth or insightful here as there was during the Travon Williams interview, but there are still a couple of amusing anecdotes. My biggest gripe about this feature is that it would have been much better to provide a sub-menu in which individual clips could have been selected instead of running them all back to back to back to back.
Sneak Preview of Season 2: When I saw this feature listed on the menu, I figured that it would just be a quick sixty second trailer for the second season, but the folks who put together the DVD actually took it a step further and provided fairly lengthy snippets of interviews from several of the episodes, which, as previously mentioned, are currently airing on BET.
The 411: I can see a certain portion of the population decrying American Gangster for glorifying the criminal element in the United States. However, that's certainly not the case. At the very least, it doesn't glorify the criminal element any more than The Sopranos or The Godfather. What we actually have here is a balanced look at the lives of individuals that the series openly admits had sociopathic tendencies. Serious questions are asked about why American society allows such individuals to rise to prominence. It is only by exposing the ugliest parts of our society that we can hope to cleanse them, and that sort of exposure is exactly what American Ganster provides. It's clear that the producers of the show have gone to great lengths to make sure that the stories that they want to tell are told, as they apparently went out of their way to acquire interviews from individuals who have great knowledge of the series' subjects and gathered a massive amount of relevant archival footage to share with the masses. Though it's still a step below similar series (such as A&E's Biography), American Gangster is still well worth viewing for a glimpse of a part of the United States that most people want to pretend doesn't exist.
