Director: Cast:
Denzel Washington ... Frank Lucas
Summary:
Review:
Looking at the movie as a whole, it was a competently processed flick from any angle. At the same time, it didn't bring me anything new for this genre. Also, the final 15 minutes felt pretty rushed. After all that time being spent on each detail of the movie's plot progressions, it seemed like they realized they were running over the runtime for the final act, and so they provided a Cliff's Notes rendition with lots of smiles and cheeky friendly banter.
Ridley Scott
Russell Crowe ... Richie Roberts
Chiwetel Ejiofor ... Huey Lucas
Josh Brolin ... Detective Trupo
There's a new form of super pure herion hitting the streets at a lower price than the other brands. The mastermind behind this product hides behind the scenes, and even bigger of a surprise is that he's BLACK. Richie Roberts goes to investigate the source of the drugs, and tries to bring the whole system down from the top.
As I was watching American Gangster, sitting through two hours of trying to nab the man responsible for these pure drugs that were being sold on the street, I couldn't help but think about how much more interesting and in-depth this investigative process was covered on HBO's The Wire. They start with the dealers, then learn more from there and eventually end up discovering the source of the product, and the puppetmaster who is pulling all the strings. With the HBO series, though, each season presents a different area of the way the system works, and is done in a much more interesting way.
OK, enough of my comparing this to a series that covers this same topic in 36+ hours. Ridley Scott finally gets back behind the camera to show up his brother. Where Tony is going crazy with bleeding colors, strange filters and massively psychotic editing and spinning cameras, Ridley has gone the other way around. He keeps things in a more typical format, keeping me from getting sick to my stomach in the process. Gangster did a great job at trying to keep the look of the late 60's era, and I never felt like throwing up because he only shook the camera around a couple of times, most notably during a big raid and chase sequence.
Denzel Washington is back onscreen as another know-it-all smartass. I wonder when he'll actually try doing something where he isn't Denzel. Probably never. Russell Crowe was also fairly solid as the cop trying to nab Washington's ass.