I’m not sure why, but there’s something special about movies that start with “American.” In my own cinema library, they include: American Beauty, an awesome movie; American History X, an awesome movie; American Psycho, an awesome movie; and American Splendor, which would be a pretty good movie if I had any tolerance for comic books.
Add to that list: American Gangster, a movie I just watched that is very awesome. The technical aspects of it were just right: sets, cinematography, soundtrack, etc. The casting wasn’t bad, except I wasn’t thrilled with Russell Crowe or the actress who played Frank Lucas’ wife. Denzel Washington really under-acted his role, in my opinion. I can’t decide if I like this or not. On one hand, in a movie about a gangster I want to see a performance that can remind me of Marlon Brando. On the other hand, that’s a bit silly and maybe he’s just trying to avoid anything that will make people think of Brando.
Anyway, the story is about a black gangster in Harlem who imports heroin from southeast Asia, and the clean New Jersey cop who tries to take down his operation. The plot and writing were excellent. It was rather long (I watched the unrated version). There was some unrealistic violence (Lucas executed a rival drug dealer at point-blank range and with awfully little blood spatter) and some some good fight scenes (eg, the drug raid conducted with shotguns). The whole rise-fall-redemption aspect is kind of stale, but at least they didn’t cheapen it too much with any excess psychoanalysis.
If you haven’t seen American Gangster, you should watch it without further delay.
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