The Black Godfather
American Gangster tells the true story of a black man named Frank Lucas. As a heroin dealer in Harlem 1968, Lucas inherited his crime empire from his famous boss Bumpy Johnson; cornering the New York drug trade with admirable capitalist strategies. Frank Lucas runs his operation by remaining low-key; no gold rings on his fingers or gold around his neck, no flashy suites that say “arrest me”, along with a quite marriage to a sweet wife. It takes authorities, mainly Richie Roberts, the longest time to figure out who he is, because they all assumed no African American could hijack the Harlem drug trade from the Mafia. The Mafia can’t believe it, either, but Lucas not only pulls if off, but is still alive at the end.
This movie demonstrated many of Dr. Paul’s traits. Listed below are a few of the characters in the movie, Dr. Paul’s trait, as well as the definition of the trait, and a brief explanation of what took place in the movie.
Frank Lucas - Played by Denzel Washington
Trait - Intellectual Autonomy – Having rational control of one’s beliefs, values, and inferences. The ideal of critical thinking is to learn to think for oneself, to gain command over one’s thought processes.
Frank Lucas started out in the drug business as a driver for his boss Bumpy Johnson. After Bumpy suffers from a heart attack and dies, Lucas inherits his crime empire. Determined to take over the New York drug trade, Lucas vows to do things his way and his way only. He personally few to Bangkok to buy his product directly from the suppliers, cutting out the middle man, so he could sell the drug at a higher purity and at a lower cost than anyone else was able to. Ironically, an epidemic of overdoses occurs when Lucas’ high-grade stuff is treated by junkies as if it’s the usual weaker street product. Then Lucas starts practicing what marketing experts call branding: It becomes known that his “Blue Magic” offers twice the potency at half the price...