Two and a Half Hours Well Spent

I watched American Gangster (2007) last night, and I recommend seeing it. I am not a big fan of Russell Crowe's, I must admit. I watched Gladiator and L.A. Confidential and I liked them, but Russell Crowe will always be the guy who throws telephones at people and just acts boorishly. Nevertheless, he is a good actor and he and Denzel Washington did an excellent job in American Gangster. This is not a particularly nuanced film. The filmmakers hit you over the head with the contrast between the family man gentleman ganster and the ethical cop with the horrible personal life. But for such a lengthy effort, it moved along nicely. As I feared, it was violent, but not graituitously so. After all, this film purports to be based on a true story about a notorious drug trafficker, and Washington portrays the character Frank Lucas as the smoothest of sociopaths. In one of my favorite scenes, he stands up from his table in a restaurant, walks outside, shoots a man in the head, and returns to his companions as says, "now where was I?" The film also captures an amazing time in New York City when the bottom had begun to fall out of all the public institutions in the city and the police department was indeed riddled with corruption. I loved the way the filmmaker alternated scenes of Lucas enjoying his lavish life with his family with his drug-using clientèle dying in the worst possible circumstances. Crowe's Richie Roberts character is not a one-dimensional superhero cop either. And best of all -- I didn't get even a hint of an Australian accent from him.