Denzel Washington Is Larger Than Life In A Thrilling True Story Climbing The Streaming Charts
Denzel Washington's American Gangster is in the top ten most-streamed movies on both Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Even for a hot Hollywood megastar, Denzel Washington is really having a moment right now. Not only are we going to get a third film in his popular Equalizer franchise, but Keanu Reeves has expressed interest in doing a John Wick crossover with that franchise. With all this love for Denzel in the air, it makes sense that fans have been streaming his 2007 hit film American Gangster, and FlixPatrol reports that the film has broken into the top 10 on both Netflix and Amazon Prime.
While we like to think the appeal of Denzel Washington is reason enough to watch American Gangster, one thing that always wins audiences over is the crazy plot. The movie serves as a cinematic adaptation of the life of Frank Lucas, who was a real Vietnam veteran turned heroin-smuggling gangster. Washington, of course, plays the titular gangster, and Russell Crowe plays the detective and aspiring lawyer who makes it his job to bring this notorious criminal in.
There are plenty of other amazing actors in the film, including some of our favorites like Idris Elba, Josh Brolin, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, but the real appeal of the movie is seeing the awesome onscreen chemistry between Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. These are two actors who know how to really make a meal out of a good script, and they were eating good with this film. However, we might never have seen their killer performances due to the number of production issues facing this movie.
For example, part of what makes the film so great is that it was directed by Ridley Scott, who previously gave us classic films like Alien and Blade Runner. He got busy directing Kingdom of Heaven and initially wouldn’t accept the project right away, leading Universal Pictures to shop around for different directors. At different points, the film was nearly directed by Antoine Fuqua and Brian de Palma before Scott agreed to bring this Denzel Washington movie to life, and this was only after Fuqua nearly killed the movie in its cradle.
While Denzel Washington was part of the intended cast since 2004, Russell Crowe’s character was very nearly played by Benicio del Toro back when the movie still had the awful name TruBlu. And Fuqua was apparently a disastrous director, trying to rewrite the script and even go into production without having a finalized list of supporting actors and scene locations. This resulted in the movie actually getting canceled, and later, there were talks about filming it with Will Smith instead of Denzel Washington.
Finally, in 2006, Ridley Scott made a firm commitment to direct the movie, and he helped get Russel Crowe involved after working together on successful films such as Gladiator. Perhaps because the veteran director was now involved, Denzel Washington returned to the movie. To him, this was the film that kept giving: per his contract, he had already been paid a cool $20 million after that initial cancellation.
Aside from all the production strangeness, one of the weirdest things about American Gangster is the involvement of legendary musician Jay-Z. Denzel Washington wanted the musician to write the score for the movie, but filmmakers declined because they thought Jay-Z would be wasted on a soundtrack made of mostly ‘70s music. But the trailer for the film did end up using his song “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)”, and after being impressed by an early screening of the film, Jay-Z recorded a concept album (also named American Gangster) which is the perfect companion piece to the movie.
For all of the behind-the-scenes drama, the finished American Gangster ended up being a critical and commercial hit. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a high critical score of 81 percent and an 89 percent audience score. This Denzel Washington film ultimately made $266.5 million at the box office, with over half of that revenue coming from international audiences.
American Gangster is also a film that has won numerous prestigious awards, including the Empire Awards recognizing it as the Best Thriller of the year. It’s not hard to see why: the combination of great writing and stunning direction is already impressive enough, and the true crime element helps keep modern audiences (we see you, Dahmer fans) engrossed. And if you want to give yourself your own little award, now is the perfect time to stream this film on Netflix and Amazon Prime.
