American Gangster

[slickstu]

You know you're onto a confident director when his two stars don't even cross paths until 90mins into the movie. It also takes some measure of confidence for a well respected director like Ridley Scott to take an honest bash at such well-established Martin Scorsese territory. But Scott does and the impressive result bears more than a passing resemblance to Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (Crowe = Ness and Washington = Capone) and Sydney Lumet's Serpico, where the criminals live a life of opulence while the honest cop survives in squalor.

Scott presents a fascinating character study centred around racism, illicit drugs and police corruption. On the one hand we have Det. Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), a hard-working cop, despised by his peers for his unwavering honesty, somehow managing to continually find the gumption to perform his job despite jeopardising the custodial battle he wages with his estranged wife for their young son. On the other hand we have Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a drug baron with honourable familial intentions. At the beginning of the film we see Lucas' business in all its reprehensible detail - the violence and the broken lives of single mother junkies - and yet after spending the next 2 hours with him, we're almost sympathetic when he's inevitably caught in Roberts' snare. This can be attributed to 2 very fine central performances in Washington and Crowe. I'm no fan of Denzel "I'm so decent I'm dull" Washington but this role fits like a glove and Russell "I may be a badboy but I'm a hell of an actor" Crowe performs to his usual high standard. Scott also assembles a remarkable ensemble support cast including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Ted Levine, Ruby Dee, Carla Gugino, Cuba Gooding Jr and Armand Assante, all delivering performances of distinction.

A couple of logical narrative flaws aside, this is Ridley scott at the top of his game.

8.5 out of 10.

[DND]

8 -10