American Gangster

Rating: 7/10 (5 December 2007)

Like a model student learns everything he is told to learn, "American Gangster" has all the elements a good gangster film should have (if you go by the book). On the one hand the gangster, Frank Lucas, a man who revolutionized drug dealing in the early Seventies, played outstandingly by Denzel Washington. He is someone for the audience to identify with his charisma, but at the same time this inhuman part of him works repellent. On the other hand there is the cop, played also very well by Russell Crowe. He, too, is a character to sympathize with, mainly because of his high moral standards and his human flaws. On a very personal level, however, "American Gangster" couldn't fully convince me. It's thrilling, dramatic and the material is very interesting, but I had the impression that it is done with a real fascination for the genre and not so much for the characters and the social network. All in all a good film with its share of minus points (amongst them Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character).