Winter 2007: American Gangster / The Jane Austen Book Club

American Gangster is the fact-based story of a snazzy African-American drug lord, played by Denzel Washington, who smuggled heroin directly from Thailand during the Vietnam War era and outsmarted the Mafia and police while doing so. The film portrays his shrewd organisational and entrepreneurial skills, ambition and low-key personality as being a more civilized, arguably more admirable, and even a more fair way of doing business, while remaining ruthlessly cost-effective.

The drug lord's equal and opposite is a scruffy and scrupulously honest cop, played by Russell Crowe, whose code of honour isolates him on a corrupt police force where some steal the drugs they confiscate, dilute their quality and resell them. While Washington's character busily consolidates the Harlem crime empire he inherited from a mentor, played by Clarence Williams III, by selling a high standard product at a low price; ensconces his mother, played by Ruby Dee, in a sprawling suburban mansion; and marries a Brazilian beauty queen, Crowe's character gets divorced, earns a law degree and becomes the head of a federal drug task force.

But as with "Heat" - in which Al Pacino and Robert De Niro play cop and crook respectively but do not meet until the final scenes, this is also the case in American Gangster - the two men's stories evolve separately. The consequence is that, unlike the elaborately conceived "double helix" of stories in "The Departed," the characters never feel integrated, and the attractive list of supporting actors - including Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Hawkes, Joe Morton and rappers Common and RZA - goes relatively unexploited.

Additionally the stories are somewhat unbalanced. Crowe's paper-shuffling work feels perfunctory, compared with Washington's glamorous world with its "Super Fly" affectations, cautionary temptations and complex moral code. The sense that we've seen all this before is inevitable in a film that ripples with references to "Serpico," "Scarface" and "The Godfather." But the fast-moving, 157-minute result - by "Gladiator" director Ridley Scott and "Schindler's List" and "Gangs of New York" screenwriter Steve Zaillian - is made cohesive and gripping through Washington's charismatic performance and Crowe's workmanlike one. Washington's dead eyes and deadlier behaviour are the muted reflection of his electrifying performance as a brutal cop in "Training Day." That role was an Oscar-winning exception for an actor who has avoided gangsta stereotypes demanded of black actors by Hollywood, of which the character here is a variation, albeit a nuanced and complicated one.

In much the same way, "American Gangster" is a cultivated and more temperate version of "Scarface." Certainly, a man is burned alive and another is shot in the head, but such scenes juxtapose Washington's domestic life with references to all the deaths that made it possible. The result does not celebrate violence, as much as portray it as the coin of the realm, whenever life has no value.

Cast: Maria Bello, Hugh Dancy, Kathy Baker, Emily Blunt, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, Jimmy Smits, Marc Blucas, Kevin Zegers, Nancy Travis
Director: Robin Swicord
Screenplay: Robin Swicord, based on the book by Karen Joy Fowler

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject of Jane Austen by any means but I suspect that if she were to arise from the grave and amble over to a cinema, she would be absolutely appalled by The Jane Austen Book Club, the latest attempt by Hollywood to squeeze Austen cultists for even more dosh with another shabby film trading on her name. Creakily plotted, smugly condescending and jam-packed with characters who are utter bores, the complete opposite of Austen's own works - this is a film that claims to celebrate the power of great writing without ever displaying any real evidence of it on its own.

The premise of the film is that six people with messy personal lives gather together to form a book group that will discuss each one of Austen's six novels over the next few months - the joke being it turns out that the lives of each of the members begins to parallel the storylines of the books they are in charge of discussing. There is Bernadette (Kathy Baker), the instigator of the group and one of those flamboyant and self-satisfied types who are never quite as charming or colourful as they clearly seem to think they are. There is Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), the middle-aged woman whose hideous husband (played by the equally deplorable tv actor Jimmy Smits) has just left her for another woman and who now despairs that she will never find love again. Jocelyn (Maria Bello), on the other hand, doesn't believe in love herself but thrives on matching up other people whether they want it or not.

To that end, she drags insufferably cute stranger Grigg (Hugh Dancy) into the group in order to set him up with Sylvia, even though he is clearly interested in Jocelyn, and then finds herself getting all jealous when he finally goes after her. There is Allegra (Maggie Grace), who is both Sylvia's daughter and an impulsive romantic who plunges herself wholeheartedly into one relationship after another without ever pausing to consider if any of her various partners are actually right for her. Finally, there is Prudie (Emily Blunt), a snobby schoolteacher who is trapped in a hellish marriage to the grimly tedious Dean (Marc Blucas), the kind of hateful bozo who thrives on watching sporting events and playing video games - acts so vile and monstrous that they force her to contemplate having an affair with one of her high-school students, a post-teenage tube who melts her heart with such touching come-ons as "I'm in 'Brigadoon' will you help me run my lines?" Ach away and fry wan ya chancer (try Brigadooning that one pal).

Those of you who stroll into The Jane Austen Book Club expecting to hear thoughtful discussions on Jane Austen and why her books continue to resonate with audiences nearly 200 years after they were originally published will be enormously disappointed to discover that the film and the characters offer virtually no insights into the woman or her work and the few that do crop up are the kind that you ordinarily hear in a school English class.

The film merely exploits both her good name and good work by applying them to something utterly unworthy of either. The various storylines are little more than familiar clichés. Will the new divorcee find happiness? Will the teacher find happiness in the arms of her husband or her facile student? Will the woman who claims that she will never fall in love find happiness with the guy she has tried to fix up with her best friend? Will the flighty lesbian ever find happiness in a relationship that doesn't begin in an emergency room?

These have all been mixed in with Austen's plot outlines in a manner that transforms her intricately woven plots into nothing more that soap opera silliness and that have as much literary and dramatic weight as a wet paper hanky. As for the characters, they are all such boring and self-absorbed twits that spending two hours watching them fret about their uninteresting personal problems while congratulating themselves for having the wit, taste and depth to fully appreciate Jane Austen, you almost feel inclined to stop reading any fiction at all for fear of one day becoming as drab and dopey as they are.