Streaming on Netflix, How to Become a Mob Boss brings out the life journeys of different mafia bosses. The second episode highlights the life of Frank Lucas, a drug lord in New York during the 1960s. How he raised his empire from scratch through extensive research, incorporating different business tactics, has been showcased. The narration of Peter Dinklage and the amazing storytelling through the animations in the documentary adds color to the story of the greater-than-life drug mafia, Frank Lucas. In what ways does Frank think to prosper in the business of heroin? Will Frank be able to save his business ultimately? Let us find out!
How Did Frank Get Into The Heroin Business?
Born in rural North Carolina during the Great Depression, the heroin tycoon Frank Lucas made his way into the business by creating his own supply chain. He earned a profit of more than a million dollars in one day.
How Did Frank Get Into The Heroin Business?
Born in rural North Carolina during the Great Depression, the heroin tycoon Frank Lucas made his way into the business by creating his own supply chain. He earned a profit of more than a million dollars in one day.
- 11/14/2023
- by Debjyoti Dey
- Film Fugitives
Inside Man is a crime thriller movie based on a true story. Directed by Danny A. Abeckaser from a screenplay by Kosta Kondilopoulos, Inside Man tells the story of a disgraced NYPD detective, who’s given a chance to go undercover and take down the mob’s most dangerous killer. The film stars Emile Hirsch in the lead role with Lucy Hale, Sid Rosenberg, Danny A. Abeckaser, Ashley Greene, and Jake Cannavale. So, if you loved Inside Man here are some similar movies you could watch next.
The Departed (Netflix & Max) Credit – Warner Bros.
Synopsis: An undercover state cop who infiltrated a Mafia clan and a mole in the police force working for the same mob race to track down and identify each other before being exposed to the enemy, after both sides realize their outfit has a rat.
The Town (Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Warner Bros.
Synopsis: Academy Award® winner Ben Affleck writes,...
The Departed (Netflix & Max) Credit – Warner Bros.
Synopsis: An undercover state cop who infiltrated a Mafia clan and a mole in the police force working for the same mob race to track down and identify each other before being exposed to the enemy, after both sides realize their outfit has a rat.
The Town (Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Warner Bros.
Synopsis: Academy Award® winner Ben Affleck writes,...
- 8/19/2023
- by Kulwant Singh
- Cinema Blind
Ridley Scott’s 2007 feature, American Gangster, let Denzel Washington lead a regime change in uptown mob movies. That heralded position had always been held by Bumpy Johnson, who steered the underworld through the real-life Harlem Renaissance, holding his own against the Irish and Jewish mobs, and enjoying a long relationship with New York’s Italian criminal outfit. Partnered with Harlem’s crime queen Stephanie St. Clair and her gang the 40 Thieves, Johnson made his bones in the turf war with Dutch Schultz from the Bronx in the 1920s and ‘30s. Lucky Luciano gave the order to take out Schultz and declare Bumpy a family associate. Bumpy played chess with the head of the Five Families for years in front of the Ymca on 135th Street.
Laurence Fishburne played “Bumpy Rhodes,” based on Bumpy Johnson, in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 gangster film, The Cotton Club, and reprised the role as Johnson in the 1997 film Hoodlum.
Laurence Fishburne played “Bumpy Rhodes,” based on Bumpy Johnson, in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 gangster film, The Cotton Club, and reprised the role as Johnson in the 1997 film Hoodlum.
- 11/10/2021
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
Frank Lucas, the legendary drug kingpin and inspiration for Ridley Scott’s 2007 true crime film “American Gangster,” has died.
He died of natural causes at the age of 88, his nephew Aldwan Lassiter confirmed to Rolling Stone, who first reported the news.
Nicknamed the “Original Gangster,” Lucas was raised in North Carolina, later moving to Harlem where he rose through the ranks of the illegal drug trade. Known for being the mastermind behind the “Golden Triangle” criminal operation of the 1970s, Lucas claimed to have smuggled heroin into the United States from Southeast Asia by way of the coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. Ron Chepesiuk, co-author of a biography of Lucas, later challenged those claims; Lucas maintained his story was true, though in 2008 he amended it, saying he only transported heroin in coffins one time.
Also Read: Top 10 Highest-Grossing Monster Movies, From 'Godzilla' to 'King Kong...
He died of natural causes at the age of 88, his nephew Aldwan Lassiter confirmed to Rolling Stone, who first reported the news.
Nicknamed the “Original Gangster,” Lucas was raised in North Carolina, later moving to Harlem where he rose through the ranks of the illegal drug trade. Known for being the mastermind behind the “Golden Triangle” criminal operation of the 1970s, Lucas claimed to have smuggled heroin into the United States from Southeast Asia by way of the coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. Ron Chepesiuk, co-author of a biography of Lucas, later challenged those claims; Lucas maintained his story was true, though in 2008 he amended it, saying he only transported heroin in coffins one time.
Also Read: Top 10 Highest-Grossing Monster Movies, From 'Godzilla' to 'King Kong...
- 6/1/2019
- by Margeaux Sippell
- The Wrap
Frank Lucas, the Harlem drug kingpin immortalized in Ridley Scott’s 2007 crime film American Gangster, died Thursday at the age of 88. Lucas’ nephew Aldwan Lassiter confirmed his death to Rolling Stone, adding that Lucas died of natural causes.
Lucas, the “Original Gangster” who was known to confabulate his own criminal legacy, is credited as the architect behind the infamous “Golden Triangle” gambit of the early 1970s where he claimed to have imported heroin from Southeast Asia in the coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam.
“Who the hell is...
Lucas, the “Original Gangster” who was known to confabulate his own criminal legacy, is credited as the architect behind the infamous “Golden Triangle” gambit of the early 1970s where he claimed to have imported heroin from Southeast Asia in the coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam.
“Who the hell is...
- 5/31/2019
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Academy Award-winning actor Russell Crowe has returned to the nation’s movie screens in Joel Edgerton‘s latest acclaimed film, “Boy Erased,” in which he plays a small-town Baptist minister, who, upon learning that his son is gay, orders him to undergo conversion therapy. After seeming to be starring in every other film in the early 2000s, Crowe has become more selective in recent years, so that when he does appear onscreen in a film, it feels like more of an event.
Crowe is one of only a handful of actors to have been Oscar-nominated for a leading role in three consecutive years — 1999’s “The Insider,” 2000’s “Gladiator” (win) and 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind,” all of which were also nominated for Best Picture (with “Gladiator” and “A Beautiful Mind” winning). He has also been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and 10 Screen Actors Guild Awards (winning in both cases for...
Crowe is one of only a handful of actors to have been Oscar-nominated for a leading role in three consecutive years — 1999’s “The Insider,” 2000’s “Gladiator” (win) and 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind,” all of which were also nominated for Best Picture (with “Gladiator” and “A Beautiful Mind” winning). He has also been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and 10 Screen Actors Guild Awards (winning in both cases for...
- 11/3/2018
- by Tom O'Brien and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
Looking back on this still-young century makes clear that 2007 was a major time for cinematic happenings — and, on the basis of this retrospective, one we’re not quite through with ten years on. One’s mind might quickly flash to a few big titles that will be represented, but it is the plurality of both festival and theatrical premieres that truly surprises: late works from old masters, debuts from filmmakers who’ve since become some of our most-respected artists, and mid-career turning points that didn’t necessarily announce themselves as such at the time. Join us as an assembled team, many of whom were coming of age that year, takes on their favorites.
There are at least two Ridley Scotts working in Hollywood. Ridley Scott, auteur — the man who revolutionized science fiction and horror cinema at the same time with Alien, who single-handedly resurrected the swords-and-sandals epic with Gladiator, who...
There are at least two Ridley Scotts working in Hollywood. Ridley Scott, auteur — the man who revolutionized science fiction and horror cinema at the same time with Alien, who single-handedly resurrected the swords-and-sandals epic with Gladiator, who...
- 11/9/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
This review was written for the theatrical release of "American Gangster".The title is catchy but misleading. Frank Lucas was less an "American Gangster" than an original Old Gangster in sable, a caricature in the tradition of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this 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, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe ("A Good Year") and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's "Training Day".
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in "Shaft", and Lawrence Fishburne twice in "The Cotton Club" and "Hoodlum".) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as "The Godfather" and "Serpico" contain iconic scenes and sequences. "American Gangster" contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So "American Gangster" finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this 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, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe ("A Good Year") and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's "Training Day".
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in "Shaft", and Lawrence Fishburne twice in "The Cotton Club" and "Hoodlum".) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as "The Godfather" and "Serpico" contain iconic scenes and sequences. "American Gangster" contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So "American Gangster" finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/22/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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