Random Citizen

The film is fictionally based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina. The film stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in their second lead acting roles together after 1995’s Virtuosity. It grossed over US$266.5 million worldwide, with domestic grosses standing at $130.1 million. American Gangster was nominated for twenty-one awards, including two Oscar nominations. In 1968, Frank Lucas is the right-hand man of Harlem mob boss Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson.

He enters the heroin trade, buying directly from producers in Thailand and smuggling it into the U.S. through Vietnam veterans. Frank sells his heroin under the brand “Blue Magic”, whose affordability and purity make it incredibly popular, eliminating much of his competition. The film tells the story of Frank Lucas, a New Jersey drug baron who sold heroin through the coffins of dead U.S. servicemen after the fall of Saigon. The film’s protagonist, John Roberts, becomes friends with Frank and helps him expose corrupt police officers and DEA officials. Frank is sentenced to 70 years in prison, of which he serves 15, and is released in 1991.

Universal Pictures purchased the rights to “The Return of Superfly”, by Mark Jacobson, an article published in New York magazine in 2000. The story was about the rise and fall of the 1970s heroin kingpin Frank Lucas. Screenwriter Steven Zaillian brought a 170-page script to director Ridley Scott, who expressed interest in making two films from it. Director Antony Fuqua was fired on October 1, 2004, four weeks before principal photography would begin. Production of American Gangster was canceled due to budget and creative differences.

In March 2005, Universal and Imagine entered negotiations with Terry George to revise Zaillian’s script and direct the film. Will Smith was approached to replace Washington as Frank Lucas, though an offer would be postponed until George completed his revision of the script. Many abandoned buildings in Harlem were shot, to give an accurate depiction of the area in the 1970s. Elements such as Frank Lucas’s interaction with his family and Richie Roberts’s dysfunctional marriage were written to add to the characters’ backgrounds. T.I., RZA, and Common were added to the cast to appeal to younger audiences.

American Gangster premiered in Harlem at the Apollo Theater on October 20, 2007. A screener for the film leaked online two weeks before its release. The film debuted in the United States and Canada on November 2, 2007, in 3,054 theaters. In its opening weekend, it grossed an estimated $43.6 million, averaging $14,264 per theater. It marked the biggest opening weekend of any film in both Washington and Crowe’s careers.

The film grossed $266.5 million worldwide at the box office, with international grosses making up 51 percent ($136.3 million). It ranked as the 19th highest-grossing film of 2007 both domestically and worldwide. American Gangster was released in DVD and HD DVD format on February 19, 2008. A mobile game based on the film was released by Gameloft on November 1.

Rotten Tomatoes reports that 81% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 216 reviews, with a rating average of 7.00/10. On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean score out of 100 to reviews from film critics, the film has a score of 76 based on 38 reviews. Roger Ebert and Paul Byrnes felt that American Gangster was “one of the most intelligent gangster films in years”. Reviewer Ian Freer described the film as “undeniably enjoyable” and praised the cast, but also felt that it did not explore enough of Lucas’ story and Scott’s visual imagination. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian was disappointed with Washington’s acting, saying he never had the “shoulder-shimmying swagger” of Malcolm X. Frank Lucas admitted to several news outlets that only a small portion of the film The Spy Who Loved Me was true.

Former DEA agents filed a lawsuit against Universal saying that the events in the film were fictionalized and that the film defamed them. Biographer Ron Chepesiuk, a biographer of Frank Lucas, deemed the story a myth.

Gangs of New York is a 2002 American historical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on Herbert Asbury’s 1927 book The Gangs Of New York. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Cameron Diaz as well as Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, Stephen Graham, Eddie Marsan, and Brendan Gleeson. It was theatrically released in the United States on December 20, 2002, and grossed over $193 million worldwide. It received ten nominations at the 75th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director and Actor (Day-Lewis), and Best Actor (DiCaprio).

After Johnny’s death, Amsterdam returns to the Five Points looking for revenge, and kills both Johnny and Tweed with a pike. The cemetery contains tombstones from the 1810s in Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral and cobblestone streets and small basements located under recent large buildings. In 1979, Martin Scorsese acquired screen rights to Asbury’s book The Godfather of Crime. It took twenty years to get the production moving forward. Difficulties arose with reproducing the monumental cityscape of nineteenth-century New York.

The project was original to be financed by Universal Pictures on a budget of $30 million. However, the rights were assigned to Disney in 1997, whose then-chairman Joe Roth turned down the film.

Production designer Dante Ferretti recreated over a mile of mid-nineteenth-century New York buildings. The film’s voice coach, Tim Monich, resisted using a generic Irish brogue and instead focused on the distinctive dialects of Ireland and Great Britain. An important piece was an 1892 wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reciting four lines of a poem in which he pronounced the word “Earth” as “Uth”. Production for Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York began on December 18, 2000, and ended on March 30, 2001. The three-year production became a story in and of itself due to the strong personalities and clashing visions of the director and producer.

During the delays, noted actors such as Robert De Niro and Willem Dafoe had to leave the production due to conflicts with other projects. Production overshot the original budget by 25%, bringing the total cost over $100 million. Gangs of New York was released on December 20, 2002, a year after its original planned release date. A twenty-minute preview debuted at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and was shown at a star-studded event. While the film has been released on DVD and Blu-ray, there are no plans to prepare a “director’s cut” for home video release.

The film made $77,812,000 in Canada and the United States. It also took $23,763,699 in Japan and $16,358,580 in the United Kingdom. Worldwide the film grossed a total of $193,772,504. Metacritic gave the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.

Casablanca is an American film directed by Michael Curtiz and released in 1942. Mainly starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, it takes place during the Second World War in the city of Casablanca in Morocco. The main subject of the film is Rick Blaine’s conflict between love and virtue. The spouses are found to be the people who had to buy safe conduits à Ugarte. Michael Curtiz, the friend of Hal B. Wallis, director of Casablanca (The Adventures of Robin Hood), shot entirely in the studio.

Curtiz took care of the form, thanks in particular to Arthur Edeson, of the black and white “Clair-obscure” photography of Ingrid Bergman. The Epstein brothers return to the script, more particularly on the denouement of the story. The production has not yet decided on the choice that Ilsa will make. Casablanca is ranked 37th in the ranking of the films given the coldest suits in 2001, giving way to Dauphin au Parrain (The Godfather). In 1989, it was designated culturally significant by the Bibliothèque du Congrès.

Casablanca is the subject of different interpretations of the repressed homosexuality implicit in most American adventure stories. Casablanca, a cult film, considered by many to be one of the greatest films in the history of cinema, has inspired various quotes or parodies. Sidney Rosenzweig thinks that the most important aspect of the film is its ambiguity, especially that of the character of Rick. In 1988, the series Clair de lune openly parodied the film in an episode of the fourth season: L’inaccessible amour.

Goodfellas (stylized GoodFellas) is a 1990 American biographical crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is an adaptation of the 1985 nonfiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi. The film starred Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino. It was made on a budget of $25 million and grossed $47 million. Goodfellas received widespread critical acclaim upon release.

In 1955, youngster Henry Hill becomes enamored by the criminal life and Mafia presence in his working-class Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn. He begins working for local caporegime Paulie Cicero and his associates: Jimmy “the Gent” Conway, an Irish-American truck hijacker and gangster, and Tommy DeVito, a fellow juvenile delinquent. Henry begins as a fence for Jimmy, gradually working his way up to more serious crimes. By 1980, Henry develops a drug habit and becomes a paranoid wreck. He meets Jimmy at a diner and is asked to travel on a hit assignment, which makes him suspicious.

Henry realizes that Jimmy plans to have him and Karen killed, prompting his decision to become an informant and enroll, with his family, into the witness protection program. After giving sufficient testimony and evidence to have Paulie and Jimmy convicted, Henry moves to a nondescript neighborhood. The film Goodfellas is based on a book written by New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi. Scorsese read the book while working on the set of The Color of Money in 1986. He has often described the film as “a mob home movie” that is about money, because “that’s what they’re really in business for”.

Two weeks in advance of the filming, the real Henry Hill was paid $480,000 for his role in the film. The director wanted to take the gangster film and deal with it episode by episode, but start in the middle and move backward and forward. He wanted to do the voiceover like the opening of Jules and Jim (1962) and use “all the basic tricks of the New Wave from around 1961”. The names of several real-life gangsters were altered for the film; Paul Vario became Paulie Cicero, and Jimmy “The Gent” Burke was portrayed as Jimmy Conway.

Robert De Niro agreed to play mobster Jimmy Conway, and Ray Liotta auditioned for the role of Henry Hill. Al Pacino, John Malkovich, Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Val Kilmer, and Tom Cruise were considered for the roles of Jimmy Conway and Henry Hill respectively. Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character, but found it challenging finding what he called “that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened”. The film was shot on location in Queens, New York state, New Jersey, and parts of Long Island during the spring and summer of 1989. Former EDNY prosecutor Edward A. McDonald appeared in the film as himself, re-creating the conversation he had with Henry and Karen Hill about joining the Witness Protection Program.

The scene was unscripted, with McDonald improvising the line referring to Karen as a “babe-in-the-woods”. He then made transcripts of these improvisations and put them into a revised script that the cast worked from during principal photography. Bracco found the shoot to be an emotionally difficult one because it was such a male-dominated cast. When it came to the relationship between Henry and Karen, Bracco saw no difference between an abused wife and her character. The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because of a practical problem: the filmmakers could not get permission to go in a short way, and this forced them to go round the back.

Scorsese decided to film the sequence in one unbroken shot in order to symbolize that Henry’s entire life was ahead of him, “It’s his seduction of her [Karen] and it’s also the lifestyle seducing him.” This sequence was shot eight times. The reason for Pesci shooting at the camera at the end of the film is a reference to the ending of The Great Train Robbery.

Scorsese wanted to depict the film’s violence realistically, cold, unfeeling, and horrible. However, he had to remove 10 frames of blood to ensure an R rating from the MPAA. With a budget of $25 million, Goodfellas was Scorsese’s most expensive film to that point. In the first test screening, there were 40 walkouts in the first ten minutes. One of the favorite scenes for test audiences was the “Do I amuse you?” scene.

Goodfellas grossed $6.3 million from 1,070 theaters on opening weekend, topping the box office. It went on to make $46.8 million domestically. Some of the music Scorsese had written into the script, while other songs he discovered during the editing phase. Goodfellas was released on DVD in March 1997, in a single-disc, double-sided, single-layer format that requires the disc to be flipped during viewing.

Goodfellas (1990) is one of Martin Scorsese’s best-known films and was voted the best film of 1990 by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96%, with an average rating of 9.00/10, based on reviews from 104 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A+ on an A+ to F scale. Goodfellas is No. 94 on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years, 100 Movies” list and moved up to No. 92 on its AFI’s 100 Years. 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list, published in 2007.

In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed Goodfellas as the fifteenth best-edited film of all time. Roger Ebert called it the “best mob movie ever” and placed it among the ten best films of the 1990s. Goodfellas inspired director David Chase to make the HBO television series The Sopranos. The film shares a total of 27 actors with Chase’s HBO series, including Bracco, Sirico, Imperioli, Pellegrino, Lip, and Vincent. In January 2012, it was announced that the AMC Network had put a television series version of the movie in development.

The Departed is a 2006 American epic crime thriller film. It was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by William Monahan. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Wahlberg, with Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, and Alec Baldwin in supporting roles. It won several accolades, including four Oscars at the 79th Academy Awards: for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. Ellerby informs Special Investigations that only Queenan and Dignam will know their undercovers’ names.

Costigan is set up a cover and serves time in jail on phony charges. Sullivan begins a romance with police psychiatrist Dr. Madolyn Madden. The MSP prepares to catch Costello selling the microprocessors, however Sullivan tips off Costello about the police presence causing the deal to occur outside of the surveillance of the police. After learning that Costello is an FBI informant, Sullivan decides to help the MSP catch him. Queenan instructs Costigan to get a visual ID of Sullivan before making the arrest but cannot recognize him. Sullivan uses the tail’s information on their location to call in Costello’s gang.

Scorsese remastered Infernal Affairs (2002) in 2004, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt slated to star. The Departed was released in 2005. Some of the film was shot on location in Boston, but for budgetary and logistical reasons many scenes were shot in New York City. Film critic Stanley Kauffmann said that Scorsese was concerned with the idea of identity. Critic Roger Ebert compared Costigan and Sullivan’s seeking of approval to Stockholm syndrome.

The Departed grossed $132.4 million in the United States and Canada and $159 million in other territories for a total gross of $291.5 million, against a production budget of $90 million. It became the fourth Scorsese film to debut at number one. The film holds a 90% approval rating based on 284 reviews, with an average rating of 8.30/10. Martin Scorsese’s The Departed won four Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, at the 79th Academy Awards on February 25, 2007. It was nominated for five other awards at the 64th Golden Globe Awards but lost to Alan Arkin for Best Supporting Actor.

At the 11th Satellite Awards, it won awards for Best Ensemble, Motion Picture, Drama, Best Screenplay – Adapted (William Monahan), and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Leonardo DiCaprio). In 2008, it was voted best film of the year by critics. The Departed was released by Warner Home Video on DVD in 2007. The film is available in a single screen (1.33:1), single-disc widescreen (2.40:1), and 2-disc special edition. The second disc contains deleted scenes; a feature about the influence of New York’s Little Italy on Scorsese; a Turner Classic Movies profile; and a 21-minute documentary.