Sunday, 3 January 2010

MEST 4 Xmas Task 1

American Gangster (2007)

Clearly the clip above demonstrates the protagonist in action from the film ‘American Gangster’. The protagonist plays the lead role of a gangster which Frank (Danzel Washington) in the scene, which the audience is capable to associate his personality to a gangster considering his actions as well as props. From a social perspective, we are able to notify Frank’s role as being a gangster due to his behaviour as he expresses his unusual motives to his family. Also the iconography with the use of the gun shown and the fact that it is even fired symbolises a criminal aspect of the lead character. Given that he also fires the firearm in public illustrates how it is a source of expression of revenge. The fact that it was fired in public could possibly influence the audience to possible believe domestic violence is appropriate due to Frank Lucas’s authority demonstrated in the movie from committing violence.

There is no evidence of the producers of the film shown in the clip above but however the institution have provided a very entertaining gangster film due to the given narrative. Not only does the clip follow the usual concepts of a traditional gangster film where the gangster shown in the movie is a pioneer of laundering dirty money from an economic perspective, American Gangster also follows the concept but however the criminal offences are committed by an African American. In comparison to classic films such as The Godfather and Scarface, the lead gangster in the film is a African American rather than him/her being South American (where many drugs are imported) or Italian (mafia).

To some extent the film could perhaps appeal specifically to the black community considering that a majority of the actors presented in the film consist of the African American race. This includes all the gangsters, the residents in Harlem NYC as well as a proportion of the undercover police officers working on cracking down Frank Lucas’s case. By an array of lead roles preformed by black people could perhaps connote them as being role models to the black youth.

Whilst Frank leaves the coffee shop in order to visit his enemy and confronts him, different angles shots are used during its filming process. Principle the idea behind using different angle shots is to simply make the viewing seem more effective to watch as the different angles help empathise the central image.

We first see a medium shot of the protagonist sitting at a table explaining rules to his companions which his body position then changes as we see him turning his head to gaze out the window. The camera then switches to a closely zooming medium shot from a first person’s view (Frank) as it then focuses only on the enemy out the window. Again there is a over the shoulder shot whilst Frank face up to his rival, which the camera then switches to the opposite position so we are now viewing Frank from his enemy’s perspective. The effective piece of this switch is that it is only shown once Frank is pointing a gun at him, which creates the audience to be aware he is serious about pulling the trigger if disrespected.

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