'Ain't no love in the heart of the city...'

Rating: 6/10 (5 October 2007)

man was that trailer cool. Too bad the trailer is the best part about this movie.
Saw this last night and the first thing you need to know is that its LOOOONG. No just long in that its 157 minutes, long in the way that you FEEL all of those 157 minutes. The pacing is so uneven and there are so many obviously unnecessary subplots (the women in Richie and Frank's lives especially) that I began to get annoyed at the running time even as the movie was still playing.
The other glaring problem is the movie's apparent lack of social responsibility. Here you have a story that is set up to depict the rise to power of the first African-American gangster in U.S. history and the way Ridley treats him as a Jesus figure completely robs the movie of any moral complexity. They have one scene that cuts back and forth between Denzel having a pimptastic Thanksgiving dinner while his "customers" are shown overdosing in tenement buildings across Harlem. That's it. The rest of the time we're meant to believe that this guy who is responsible for spreading ultra-pure Heroin across the city is revered as some sort of messiah. Sorry, I just didn't buy it even if it is based on true events.
The acting is good in a been there done that sort of way. We're so familiar with Russel and Denzel by now that we take them for granted and I don't think these characters were any real stretch for them. Josh Brolin steals the movie in every scene he's in as an unbelievably corrupt cop while Joe Morton's inexplicably blond mustache steals every frame that it is in.
Won't get into spoilers but the ending is particularly troublesome with a very tidy conclusion that alters the real facts the whole movie is supposed to be based on. Overall this is good but not great. Will probably get Oscar consideration in acting and directing categories as it is in the gangster chic motif that Hollywood seems to love.