When his boss dies, Frank Lucas takes over the business and decides that a few necessary changes are in order. With the use of his integrity, his family and a strict business code, Lucas changes the way business is done on the streets and quickly becomes the most powerful mobster to ever walk the streets of Brooklyn. Meanwhile, a veteran cop in Richie Roberts is heading up a new unit and he has his eye on Lucas. Lucas has always been able to buy off anyone in his way, but for some reason Roberts doesn't seem to go away that easy.
Suffering from a snail paced script, a dull storyline and lack of action American Gangster misses the mark and brings about one of the biggest disappointments so far this year.
Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are two of Hollywood's most acclaimed actors, and both carried their weight in American Gangster. Denzel played a popular mobster to perfection, carrying class, elegance and grit. Washington's Lucas sold "˜Blue Magic' on the streets, acting like a drug dealer but thinking like a CEO. Then you have Russell Crowe, who is battling his wife for partial custody of their son while trying to prove his worth to his coworkers and preparing for the bar exam in his attempt to become a lawyer. Both actors portray their characters perfectly, bringing attitude, tone and tension to the screen. Unfortunately, that along with director Ridley Scott's perception of the time and atmosphere is the only good things about the film.
The death punch to the film was the story. The film was almost 2 ½ hours long, with the two leads not appearing in the same scene until almost two hours in. The story is perceived as a "˜cat and mouse' type of chase, but the two never see each other. It actually takes Roberts half the film to figure out who Lucas is, all the while Lucas is killing people in plain daylight on the street before returning to a café to finish his coffee. It is just unbelievable.
Then there is the two hours of back story that is shared with us. I understand that you have to have a little bit of the past to understand the present and future, but two hours? The long episodes caused the film to drag in the mud, loosing its intensity and flow.
Then you have stretches of immense jumping around as we go from NYC to Brooklyn to Queens then to New Jersey and North Carolina, there is just no steady location. This may not seem to be a big deal but it doesn't take long before everything and everybody begins to run together creating moments of confusion throughout the film.
Then we finally reach the end of the film, not the very end, but the last forty five minutes which proves to be the best part of the film. With its fast action, high intensity and commendable chemistry between the two leads, American Gangster ends with a bang, giving the audience a good feeling as it leaves the theatre. However, it just wasn't enough.
In the end the film was average, nothing special or spectacular, just an average "˜over told' story that relied on its actors to overshadow a struggling script. Unfortunately the acting couldn't save this story on its destined destruction route. I only wish they had summed up the first two hours in one and made a two hour film, which would have easily created more drama, suspense, intensity and action.
