Artistic License History / American Gangster

American Gangster deals with a very public figure in the form of New York-based drug kingpin Frank Lucas (portrayed by Denzel Washington), and was based off a New York Magazine cover story, "The Return of Superfly," about Lucas' rise and fall to fame. Despite the well-documented time period, the film takes many creative liberties with the material (the least of which being that it was, at least partially, influenced by Lucas himself, who hyped up the film in some pre-release interviews claiming that it was faithful to the real events that preceded it).

The film has been cited by numerous sources as being so historically inaccurate that at least one DEA agent who worked on the case stated that its accuracy was closer "to single digits". That includes wildly-exaggerated portrayals of most of its lead characters and sweeping liberties taken with the real-world events. Several interviews and miniseries (including the American Gangster documentary on BET) have also disproved much of the material shown in the film.

Characters

• Frank Lucas:
  • Towards the end of the film, Lucas relates an anecdote to Richie about his Start of Darkness being caused by an incident he witnessed in the Deep South as a child, where he saw his cousin, Obadiah, get arrested by racist police officers and killed when they tied him up to a pole and executed him with a shotgun. The actual story (insofar as the real Lucas' telling) involved white supremacists who captured his cousin for "eyeballing a white girl" too much, though both these tales, according to author Ron Chepesiuk (the author of a book on Lucas' life), have no known historical information corroborating the story.
  • The film version of Lucas becomes The Informant during the ending, telling on crooked cops and DEA members who've wronged him (along with implying he'll name Mafia sources as well), though he seems to draw the line at naming other gangsters or drug dealers. The real Lucas, despite claims to the contrary, informed on plenty of dealers and other gangsters but never named a crooked DEA agent, according to former agent Jack Toal (who took Universal Pictures to court over the film's accuracy) and Richie Roberts himself (for whom pointing this out in public, to Lucas' chagrin, was apparently a Running Gag between the pair). This is borne out by the official records of events, which confirm that no DEA agents were ever charged with wrongdoing in connection with Lucas' information.
• Richie Roberts:
  • The real-life Richie and his first wife never had a child together, meaning the film's Establishing Character Moment (being revealed to have an ongoing bitter custody battle with his wife, which is influencing his work-life balance) was completely fabricated for the film. Roberts would later go on to tell the New York Post in an interview years later that the portrayal of his life was "offensive".
  • In the film, Roberts is portrayed as a dogged professional / virtuous officer who doesn't have the respect of his superiors when he initially tries to get them to investigate Frank, and through sheer persistence, manages to assemble a task force of other clean cops nearly on his own to go after Frank's operations. Roberts' role in the film has been disputed by numerous law enforcement professionals, who claim that Roberts was a minor part of a much larger team that was investigating Frank, and that much of the focus put on his character as the sole driving force to take down Frank was exaggerated. In 2008, three former DEA agents involved with the case (Jack Toal, Gregory Korniloff, and Louis Diaz) attempted to file a lawsuit against Universal over the film's portrayal of the case, alleging that the film defamed the "hundreds" of agents who were involved in one way or another on the case. (The case was eventually thrown out of court after it was deemed that the plaintiffs hadn't met the standards of defamation.)
• Eva:
  • Among the few things the character has in common with her real-life inspiration (Julianna Farrait-Rodriguez [Julie Lucas]) is that both were from Puerto Rico, both tried to convince Frank to get out of the drug game and both left Frank after he went to jail (though the real Mrs. Lucas eventually reconciled and went back to live with him). The film shows Frank meeting Eva at a club in New York and quickly romancing her, while the real Frank met her in Puerto Rico, where he would routinely visit to unwind and brainstorm ideas for his drug business.
  • The film depicts Eva as being a former Miss Puerto Rico winner, though the real Julie was (according to Frank) only a homecoming queen winner, and that he had no awareness of her ever winning a national contest of that type.
• Bumpy Johnson: Contrary to the film's assertion, Bumpy did not die in an electronics store, just after waxing poetic about the rise of chain retail stores muscling in on his territory and making it impossible for him to get a share of their profits. Instead, he died early one morning in 1968 at Wells Restaurant in Harlem. Moreover, Frank was not with Bumpy on the morning of his death — according to Bumpy's widow, Mayme Johnson, he was with a close childhood friend, Junie Byrd, at the time of his death. Mayme would later go on to claim in 2007 that she didn't want to see the film because it was based off exaggerations by Frank.
• Detective Trupo: At the end of the film, the character (played by Josh Brolin) is Driven to Suicide after realizing that the police are going to arrest him for being The Mole within NYPD and taking drug money from Frank. The character was allegedly based on a real detective nicknamed "Babyface", who (according to Lucas) was alive well into the 2000s.

Story

• The central resource that drives the story, "Blue Magic" heroin, is described as "100 per cent pure" and smuggled in to the States, cut and offered to addicts at the same purity. It would have utterly decimated the real-life Lucas' business if it actually hit streets at that purity. While the heroin that was imported came in at 98 per cent purity (not 100 per cent, as the film version of Lucas claimed), the product had to be significantly cut down with a mixture of quinine and mannite, and hit streets at a 10 per cent purity rate. Moreover, it makes the scene where Lucas berates fellow drug trafficker Nicky Barnes for cutting Blue Magic down to "1, 2, 3, 5 per cent" hilariously hypocritical, as the real-life Frank noted in interviews that the quality had to be cut down further to keep his customers alive, as heroin at even one-to-three per cent purity would often lead to a spike in deaths from users.
• The opening sequences, which show Frank being educated by The Mentor, Bumpy Johnson, are greatly exaggerated, according to interviews with Johnson's widow and historical information. Frank is stated as having worked as The Dragon to Bumpy for nearly 15 years, but historical data makes that claim impossible in reality (Johnson was released from prison in 1963, meaning he would have met Lucas, at the earliest, right after his release) and died five years later, in 1968. Bumpy's widow, Mayme, would later claim in interviews released around the time of the film that Frank was a glorified driver who rarely saw Bumpy, and that the film's assertion that Frank Was The Dragon to Bumpy was greatly misconstrued.
• The scene where Frank, in front of several family members (who are sitting in a diner) strolls out into a busy street and personally executes the unrepentant Tango (Idris Elba) may not have occurred, as Frank himself would later officially deny the murder before he passed in 2019. The inspiration for the scene came from the "Return of Superfly" article in New York Magazine, where Frank personally boasted that he shot Tango four times in the head after the latter swore at him during an argument. What's known is that in Frank's telling of the story, no family members were present, and he didn't go back to a diner to eat with them after the murder. Regardless, no criminal charges were ever laid in connection with Tango's death.
• The central conceit of Lucas' rise to fame — namely, that he routinely smuggled opium out of Southeast Asia by hiding it in the coffins of deceased U.S. soldiers being flown home, was officially denied by Lucas before his death. (He would claim in an Associated Press story in 2008 that he only once did this, hiding pure heroin in a false floor installed into a casket). Moreover, the entire conceit of Lucas' machinations only getting as far as they did, and drug use in the U.S. being primarily caused by heroin funnelling out of Southeast Asia in The '70s, has been pointed out by some historical journals as being much more trumped-up than it actually was, in order to provide a convenient scapegoat for U.S. officials to pin the blame on. (To note - one DEA report from the mid-70s, reported by the same source, outright states that 80 per cent of American imported heroin actually came from Mexico.)
• The opulent mansion (and sprawling grounds) Frank buys for himself and his mother, and subsequently moves several members of his family into is nothing like the actual house Frank and Julie Lucas lived in, located on Sheffield Road (in a modest suburban neighborhood) in New Jersey.
• The post-climax scene of the film has Frank (who is attending a church service with his family) walk out into the pouring rain, only to be arrested by Richie and a fleet of cops, who have sealed off the entire street in a semi-circle around the building, with Frank reacting in surprise after he realizes his empire is finished. A powerful scene... but it never happened that way in real life. Frank and Julie Lucas were arrested during a raid on their New Jersey home by multiple agents, with Julie found trying to throw suitcases full of money out of the couple's bathroom window when she was arrested. Additionally, the raid was conducted by some of the highest-ranking DEA agents in the state, who were all forced to search each other for contraband by their superiors (who'd arrived after the raid) in order to ensure that there was no risk of corruption within the force.
  • Conversely, the climactic scene of Richie and the task force assaulting the high-rise drug production facility overseen by Huey (and the resulting chase between Richie and Huey that follows) is fabricated for the film. (This is borne out by "Superfly: The True Untold Story of Frank Lucas, American Gangster", which states in its first chapter that the raid on Frank's suburban house involved numerous high-ranking DEA members, none of whom were Roberts.) The actual sequence of events saw two of Frank's brothers get arrested at a garage, which occurred in tandem with Frank's arrest (and is shown in the film, but briefly), while the related arrests of several alleged associates with ties to the Gambino Family were Adapted Out. Frank later makes reference to members of the mob "stealing my money" when he decides to turn informant, but their presence is next-to-nonexistent for the majority of the film.
• The ending makes it seem as though Frank is arrested in 1976 and sentenced to 70 years in prison, and (through cooperation with the police, via naming crooked cops) has his sentence reduced to 15 years, only being released from jail in 1991. The actual sequence of events is Adapted Out — Frank was put into the witness protection program with his family in 1977 for his efforts being an informant, and had his sentence reduced to five years. In 1984, he was charged with attempting to conduct a drug deal, and (as a repeat offender) spent seven years in prison. Moreover, various parties connected with the case claimed after the fact that Lucas named both crooked cops, dealers and members of the Mafia, which is a far cry from how the film portrayed him.

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