AMERICAN GANGSTER

            Frank establishes himself as one of the top importers of heroin in Manhattan. He does it by buying heroin directly from the source in Asia and avoiding all the intermediaries, getting the drug in the United States. His product is much better than all the other drugs available on the street and it is much cheaper as well. He has a powerful position and a very successful business until detective Roberts catches him, then everything changes, and he is forced to give names and help the police.

            Some ideas about the causes of criminal activity is the amount of money that this particular kind of crime (drug dealing) involves. The main cause is money, and the power you have when you have money. Another cause of criminal activity involving the drug world is the murder to save the business.

            According to Rafter, although movies attribute criminality to an enormous range of factors, they favor four basic explanations. One set of films emphasizes environmental causes, illustrating how criminalistics subcultures or other situational factors can drive people to crime. A second set stresses mental illness, demonstrating that psychological abnormality is a source of criminal behavior. Aspirations for a better life dominate the motives of a third set of film criminals. A fourth explanation of crime, bad biology.

            For the most part, the movie deals with rational crimes. Rafter describes this kind of criminals as normal human beings driven by the mundane motives of need and greed, but they have other choice. Their characters survey their circumstances and decide to commit crimes, and their decisions are rational and logical. With drug dealing comes a lot of crime including murder. To save the huge drug dealing business the protagonists kills a set of people that are a threat for him or for the business. The protagonist obviously has other options rather than killing them but he decides to do it in a rational way that makes completely sense to him.

            On the other side, we can also see another type of crime. When the detective gets a call from his partner saying he killed a guy who opened fire against him, that crime would be considered an environmental crime. Rafter says environmental criminals are depicted as offenders whom circumstances have forced them into crime, and these criminals are essentially normal.