American Gangster tells the story of Frank Lucas, the biggest, baddest, blackest gangster in 60's-era America, and Detective Richie Roberts, the honest cop chosen by the Feds to stop the growing drug problem. There were some things I liked and some things I didn't like about this 2.5 hour movie. So let me break it down to you by half hour episodes. In the first 30 minutes, we are introduced to the trite, hackneyed police corruption plot we've seen a million times before combined with the archetypal family man gangster. In the second 30 minutes, we are introduced to superfluous characters and side stories that take up too much time. The third 30 minutes contain periods of ferocity and tension punctuating the rather senselessly boring nothing that takes up the majority of the movie. The fourth 30 minutes we finally see a bit more excitement and character development. It starts to be more than random information being slowly revealed to us. We are actually engaged by the characters and their actions for once. The fifth 30 minutes are incredible. A truly powerful climax and a high-note to end the movie on. It almost makes up for the rest of the movie. Almost.The movie is more than technically proficient, but less than necessary when it comes to storytelling. Why are we watching any of this? The one word to describe this movie would be excess. It's as if they had a solid story, and then decided to add junk on the sides. Ridley Scott should decide which story he wants to tell and tell it. He goes for the gangster building up his empire and the cop investigating the rising drug problem. They eventually intersect, so why not just start the story there? People keep asking, who is this guy? How does he do what he does? But we don't feel the same sense of wonder and awe that the rest of the characters do because we know who he his and we know how he sells better heroin for less money. The first hour and a half should have been cut, replaced by 15-30 minutes of more revealing storytelling from either Crowe or Washington's perspective. That would make this a much tighter, much better movie. Instead, it's a limp, overlong, unsuccessful attempt at an epic gangster movie in the vein of The Godfather.
IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0765429/