American Gangster

I’m about to blow your mind.  American Gangster, the film that’s going to do 60 million bucks at the box office this weekend, is…ok.  It’s certainly not bad, but it is by no means great.  Great gangster/crime films like The Godfather, Goodfellas, or even last year’s Best Picture winner The Departed, stand miles and miles above this movie.  Here’s why:

1. Pacing – Surprisingly, this film moves very slowly.  Russell Crowe’s Detective Richie does not even learn the existence of Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas until 90 minutes into the movie.  Hell, Frank Lucas doesn’t even become the titular gangster until the movie is halfway over.  The film’s entire first act is setup: slow, boring set-up.  Plus, there’s a stupid divorce subplot between Crowe and his ex-wife (played the sexiest ex-Entourage agent, Carla Gugino) which takes up about 20 minutes of screen time throughout the film and could easily have been cut to help the movie flow a bit better (not to mention faster!).  The pacing picks up a bit towards the second half, but even then, it’s just not the fast, intense pacing you would expect from a big dramatic crime film.  Which brings me to:

2. Suspense – There is no real suspense in this film.  You could probably write an outline of the script in about 15 minutes, right now, without watching a single minute of the movie.  While there are some excellent scenes of intense, graphic violence, usually at the hands of Denzel (such as when Denzel shoots The Wire’s Stringer Bell right in the forehead, or when Denzel slams his cousins head in the cover of a grand piano with a sickening crunch), but very few of them are tense or suspenseful.  You never fear for the lives of our main characters, and now that I think about it, there are very few deaths in the film at all.

3. Denzel – is awesome.  I don’t know if Crowe was going for an understated performance or it just came off that way, but his work was fairly flat and easily overshadowed by the fiery Denzel.  It was exhilarating to watch Denzel go from calm to violent rage and back to placid in about 2 seconds.  As for Big Russ, I much prefer his work as a cop in Curtis Hansen’s L.A. Confidential to his performance here.

4. Ridley Scott – is a very overrated director.  Think about all of his movies since Gladiator (which was obviously amazing).  Matchstick Men, Black Hawk Down, that dumb romantic comedy where Russell Crowe moves to Italy and acts out Diane Lane’s part Under The Tuscan Sun, and now American Gangster – these are all movies featuring A-list talent and an A-list production team, but have failed to cross the line from good film to great film.  Will we ever see a Scott film on par with Gladiator or Blade Runner?  Methinks this director’s best days are behind him.

5. Random note – every actor in this movie is someone you’ll recognize.  Stringer Bell, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin (who is terrific as corrupt agent Tropo), the less cool brother from The Boondock Saints (he has 2 lines as a morgue worker), Sol Starr from Deadwood – it’s a who’s who of random pretty cool dudes.  A nice plus.

6. Another random note – The phrase “My man!” is uttered a good 50 times in this movie.  So pardon me if I start unknowingly dropping this ish in conversation.

Should you see this movie?  Well, there really ain’t much else in theaters these days, and you know this movie is going to get a bunch of Oscar noms no matter how good or bad it is, simply because of the timing of its release, its top tier talent, and a relative dearth of worthy films this year.  Plus, it has some killer trailers attached to it (I LOVED the trailers for Jumper, Wanted and I Am Legend).

Is this a movie you have to see?  Absolutely not.   I’d rather rent Goodfellas any day.
Grade: B-