American Gangster (2007): In 1970s America, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country from the Far East.

This movie can be considered an epic gangster movie. This story is divided between good cop Archie (Russell Crowe) and drug lord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). Their stories alternate for the whole movie until the end, when they finally cross each other.

Archie’s story in interesting but I’ve seen it all before. Good cop tries to do the right thing but is ostracized by his colleagues, who are corrupt cops (this obviously reminded me of Serpico). Crowe does a good job, but he’s done better.

Frank’s story was more interesting to me, at least his plan to become the first African/American drug lord. His plan to cut the middleman and go directly to the source works. I liked that part of his story, however director Scott also tried to show Frank’s family, in an attempt to let us care about his character, almost make him a good person. But it fails miserably, even though the casting of Washington was made so that we would like him.

It doesn’t work especially at the end, when Frank all of a sudden is working with Archie and we see them smile together in a montage that really offended me. That montage also shows some corrupt cops, and it’s supposed to be the big finale, but it really didn’t resonate with me because these cops were only cameos in the film.

The execution of this movie is very good, Scott’s technical skills are showing in this movie. The pace of the movie is very well done, it never bored me, allowing tension to build before each action scene.

I didn’t like the scene where Archie is checking the military plane and all of a sudden someone comes and stops it. After their conversation Archie goes back to the investigation, as if nothing happened. What was the point of that?

I did like this movie, but I also have many problems. It’s certainly not the big epic that it tried to emulate: Godfather, Goodfellas. This is probably more similar to Heat, in terms of quality and general story format.

Rating: 3 Stars