I saw "American Gangster" last night. It was kinda meh, boiling down to too much of an archetypal cops & robbers gunfest for my liking. Russel Crowe's detective character was hackneyed, the trophy wife figure completely unnecessary, Denzel did that stern/grumpy face and beat his chest after barking an emotional line like every other Denzel movie... I could go on but that's not what I'm posting about.

The movie was based on a New York Magazine article from a few years ago about Frank Lucas, a 70's Harlem heroin kingpin, played perhaps too nicely by Denzel Washington in the flick.

The article is a fantastic read; this guy is a very bad man.

***

"'Then the motherfucker broke for me. But he was too late. I shot him. Four times, right through here: bam, bam, bam, bam.

'Yeah, it was right there,' says Frank Lucas, 35 years after the shooting, pointing out the car window. 'The boy didn't have no head. The whole shit blowed out back there . . . That was my real initiation fee into taking over completely down here. Because I killed the baddest motherfucker. Not just in Harlem but in the world.'

Then Frank laughs.

Ha ha ha, siss siss siss. For how many luckless fools like Tango was this the last sound they heard on this earth?"