Sprawling crime epic that plays it strictly by the numbers

Rating: 5/10 (14 April 2009)

I had this one sitting on my DVD shelf for a while. For some reason, I could never drum up much enthusiasm to watch it. Well, it's another decent if ultimately perfunctory effort from Ridley Scott. Pretty much the same deal as the last 5,000 or so films he's done. You won't finish watching this and think "Wow, that was a really bad film", but you'll probably be left with the vague sense that the 2 and a 1/2 hours viewing time might've been better spent doing something else. That's quite a plummet in quality for the visionary maverick behind Alien and Bladerunner. I could watch those films over and over again (and do). But I could never imagine bothering to give American Gangster a second viewing.
Finding precise fault with the film is not particularly easy. On the surface at least, it's a well constructed movie and Scott does a good job in weaving the disparate pieces of the sprawling narrative together. On a technical level, American Gangster is pretty much flawless, albeit in a style so well worn that we could politely file it away in a drawer labeled "serious adult drama" and then forget about it.
And therein lies the problem. There is nothing you will see in American Gangster that smacks of genuine inspiration. Scott is attempting to give us a modern American crime epic, but what he's really delivering is the standard set of movie archetypes that are now endemic to the genre. Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas is the smart, ruthless and fast rising crime lord who will eventually see his world come crashing down around him. Russell Crowe's Richie Roberts is the determined, incorruptible cop who lives and breathes to bring Lucas down, at the expense of neglecting his personal life. Pretty much the same deal you've seen in about a million other movies then.
Both Crowe and Washington have received critical plaudits for their performances here, but it's about what you'd expect from two Hollywood heavyweights. In other words, you will never for a moment become totally immersed in these characters or their story. What you will see is a pair of Hollywood big-shots doing their level best to inflate what are actually fairly run of the mill roles into something of serious importance. You can practically hear these guys reciting their Oscar acceptance speeches somewhere off in the wings. It's more about affected posturing than it is about actual substance. Josh Brolin easily delivers the film's strongest performance as a ruthless and conniving cop on the take, Detective Trupo. You can really feel the oily malevolence behind the character. Considering Brolin's recent run of hot form, maybe that's not so surprising.
The story is told competently enough but fails to produce anything in the way of an emotional pay-off. Scott strives mightily to capture the grand themes of American crime cinema: greed, corruption, big business, redemption. You know the drill by now. Unfortunately, Scott just doesn't have anything fresh to say about these things. The truth of the matter is, guys like Scorsese, Coppola and David Chase have pretty much told us all we need to know about the American crime genre. If you're going to delve into this kind of territory, then you're going up against such heavyweight fare as the Godfather, Goodfellas and the Sopranos. And American Gangster doesn't really cut it in that kind of company. It's like the wannabe kid brother who gets left behind as the lookout while the older kids go off and do the really cool stuff.
Like so much of Scott's output in recent years, American Gangster has a curiously flat quality. It never really feels like it comes alive. You might say it's perfectly acceptable film making. Scott knows his trade well enough. Too well, maybe. It's just not an especially satisfying meal. It's two and a half hours of mildly interesting story that never strikes out of the genre confines and into fresh and engaging territory. There's much worse ways to waste your time than watching American Gangster, for sure, but if you're really looking for that crime epic fix, then you'd be better off re-watching your Godfather DVD or playing through Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.