huge disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (19 January 2008)

I had really been looking forward to seeing this movie. Ridley Scott is one of a kind and Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe usually burn pretty much through. Still the movie was a big let down; it's a story told a million times. The story was plain and quite straight forward, very similar to other gangster movies in some respects. Many gangster movies are pretty much like this: you follow the upcoming gangster and see him make it to the top. The reason why he makes it to the top of the food chain is different from movie to movie but it has almost always to do with cruelty; scarface, untouchables and goodfellas to mention a few. Frank Lucas has that ability too but on top of that he seems like a fair guy who has a philosophy that dictates that he never shall attract attention to himself by dressing up for instance. And it also seems like he has adopted his mentors (Bumpy) behavior of giving out food on thanks giving thereby making him less prone to envy and hatred (he must have been calculating doing this or else he is a hypocrite) . And then he has the joker above them all; he skips all the middle men and gets his drugs straight from the fields in Vietnam. The Blue Magic..
We shift between Frank Lucas as the before mentioned gangster and the honest hardworking cop Richie Roberts who has difficulties both in his private life as well as in his professional career. He is simply to honest (reminded me of Serpico) for his fellow cops. He gets assigned to a special drug enforcement unit and from the very beginning we assume that the two are gonna meet. The development of the story is very slow. There are some turning points in it that I didn't get at all. How did Frank, as a driver, get to be the top guy? Near the end Lucas and Roberts becomes friends which maybe isn't exactly odd but still you don't see how it came to be that way so you just have to guess. The thing that bothered me the most was, that it was told in a very uninvolved way.
If you are totally new to the genre of gangster movies it might be a good one to start with since it has so many elements from previous movies incorporated but if you are familiar with the genre stay away. Really!
regards Simon
Ps. When you read reviews that gives max score check to see if the user has made more than one review. If not consider the possibility of a lobbyist. If you agree consider putting this post scriptum at the bottom at your own reviews.