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American Gangster

True-crime story has guns blazing, but that's not enough

By Matt Pais

November 2, 2007

Critic's Rating:

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In 1970s New York, tough guy Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) establishes the city's biggest heroin-dealing operation, thanks to goods delivered by American planes returning from the Vietnam War. New Jersey cop/law student Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) spearheads the effort to bring Lucas down. As the Italian mobster who bows to Lucas, Armand Assante does his best impression of Sylvester Stallone impersonating Marlon Brando.

Big question: Can director Ridley Scott's ("Gladiator") two-and-a-half hour take on this true story uncover the inner conflicts of a lawman and a criminal, and the city that embraced them both?

Skip it: First-rate visually but otherwise shooting blanks, "American Gangster" reveals little about the city that thirsted for escape from a tumultuous time in American history. Washington hits his usual notes—he's charismatic one minute, explosive the next—but never shows how the two sides co-exist in Lucas or what the contrast says about him.

Catch it: If you're a policeman and need an ego boost. While Roberts gets busy with his attorney, she orders him to, er, make love to her like a cop, not a lawyer! As if the world needs more lawyer jokes.

Bottom line: Its great trailer suggested "Gangster" would be a star-studded deconstruction of American entrepreneurship, police corruption and an era of hedonism and unrest. But excluding a show-stopping climactic action sequence, the movie's as uninterested in investigating its subject as the crooked cops who greet drug dealers with an open hand.

Bonus:  Lucas' crew insists that the girls who cut and bag the drugs do their job naked so they can't steal anything. Makes it easy to get dressed for work!

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