Those of you that know me, know that I am a huge movie buff. I have an extensive DVD collection, am an Oscar historian and I watch a lot of movies. The problem I have noticed in recent years is that movies these days stink. I can’t even tell you how many times in the past few years I have gone to the movies, forked over $11.25 for my ticket, been really excited to see something and was then terribly disappointed. American Gangster is a movie I have been excited about for months now and I finally saw it last night. I have to say I have very mixed feelings about this movie.

This movie had the makings of a true classic to me, a tough New York drug/crime drama that had two powerhouse actors, 2 time Oscar winner Denzel Washington and Oscar winner Russell Crowe (although Crowe should’ve had 2 best actor wins in a row but he was robbed by Denzel when he won for Training Day in 2001 over Crowe’s A Beautiful Mind) plus director Ridley Scott who did Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. I was all set to be thoroughly entertained.

Without giving the movie away to those who haven’t seen it, I will summarize my thoughts like this. Denzel Washington, who I don’t love as an actor, was awesome as Frank Lucas, a Harlem drug lord who was above the Mafia and owned half the cops in Manhattan. This role was clearly written for him and him only and he didn’t disappoint as it would have been tough to do so with a role this cool.

Russell Crowe looked very out of place to me as an honest yet troubled cop with a silly fake American accent and certainly not a New York/New Jersey accent. The development of his character was forced and really contributed to why I didn’t think this movie was as good as it should’ve been. This role could’ve been played by anyone as it wasn’t a starring role that was worthy of a great actor like Crowe.

Throughout the movie, Crowe’s character goes through a completely irrelevant custody battle with his ex wife and they repeatedly show him with many different women which really made no sense to the crux of the film. The parts of the film where they focused on Crowe were certainly the doldrums of the movie. Denzel’s character development was fantastic and it was nice the way they brought his family into it and showed how he rose up through the ranks in 1960’s Harlem and took advantage of his opportunity to be the man. In the end he got greedy and was eventually taken down by Crowe and his team of street cop misfits.

The movie was too long. It ran about 2 hours and 40 minutes and could’ve easily been cut down to 2 hours or even less. This would’ve made the important scenes more profound and there would’ve been less boring and useless filler time. Also, I have read that Crowe and Washington had great chemistry on this film. I am not sure what film those critics were watching as they didn’t even have a scene together until the very end and it was mostly windowdressing at that point. Crowe showed Denzel that he couldn’t be bought and then they worked out a plea for Denzel to snitch. A cool scene but hardly amazing chemistry as I have read.

Anyway, it was an OK/good but certainly not not great movie, it may or may not have been the best film I’ve seen this year but that’s not comparing it to much. The movies this year and the past few years have been awful as a whole and just once I wish I could see someone get it right without dragging a movie on unnecessarily for nearly 3 hours or over Hollywooding the movie. Just tell the story and get to the point using good actors. The biggest names aren’t necessarily always the best. I would kill to see a new great movie like Platoon, Braveheart, Goodfellas or the Godfather. A movie that tells a great story, has amazing character development and doesn’t waste the viewers time.

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